[AC 21.5] Static checker fun

I get to play with static checkers this summer. Here's some stuff that some code analysis tools I'm working with found in our code base. There were tons of false positives for various reasons, too. Locating these took some digging through the voluminous output. One thing I hope to accomplish is finding ways of making the checker shut up about good code that it isn't smart enough to understand. Here are some brief descriptions about what is going on and why I think this patch is correct. If there is anything controversial in here, I'll split it out as a separate patch.