History Film / Frequency

* SkeletonKeyCard: Frank tries to get into Sissy Clark's apartment with a Mastercard. It works, but he's too late for her.
* SkeletonKeyCard: Frank uses this technique to get into Sissy Clark's apartment. [[spoiler:Unfortunately he's too late]].

* NoGoodDeedGoesUnpunished: Julia saved [[spoiler: Shepard from dying of medical error, and he repays her by adding her to his ''[[SarcasmMode lovely]]'' list of Nightingale victims.]]

* NeverGotToSayGoodbye

* TimeyWimeyBall

* HollywoodCB: John and Frank can communicate via their ham radios without keying the microphone to speak. This is handwaved by the radios being magically connected via the [[SpaceIsMagic aurora borealis]]. This "easy talk" effect is necessary to ensure that the climactic fight scenes can unfold without losing the radios connection.

* SpaceIsMagic: The radio connection to the past is made possible by incredible strong sun storms that have created an aurora borealis above the city. [[note]]The 2016 show used [[LightningCanDoAnything a lightning surge]] to establish the connection.[[/note]]

* SanDimasTime: 1969 time and 1999 time seems to be hooked up and run concurrently during the duration of the ''aurora borealis''. Possibly the best portrayed example in movie history.

* PlayingGertrude: Creator/ElizabethMitchell is two years ''younger'' than Jim Caviezel while playing his mother. More appropriate when she plays the mother in the past, though.

* RippleEffectIndicator: Throughout the movie. Perhaps most notably the letters burnt into the desk.

* ChekhovsGun: Literally.

* DelayedRippleEffect: The effects of the temporally-displaced conversation between father and son don't take place all at once. Although it is quite inconstant -- the speed of some actions in the past seems synced to the speed of the effects appearing in the present while others can take only a fraction of a second in the past but the effect in the present takes much longer. Notable examples:
** A sentence written in the past appearing in the present letter-by-letter.
** In one scene, the bad guy gets his hand blown off with a shotgun, meanwhile his 30 years in the future counterpart is shocked to see that same hand wither away into a nub while strangling his original opponent's son.
** Later the father, who originally [[spoiler: died 30 years ago appears out of nowhere to finish off the bad guy]].

* ForWantOfANail: All over the gosh-dang place.

* MeanwhileInTheFuture: Both timelines run congruent to each other thirty years apart. When Frank affects something in 1969, John feels its effect at the same time of day in 1999.

* SlowMotionFall: Frank and the girl he is rescuing fall out of a burning building into the Hudson River.

* TheSlowPath: At the end, Frank takes the slow path to rescue John from the Nightingale Killer.

* TimeTravelForFunAndProfit: Although not the main focus of the film, John drops a hint to his perennially unlucky friend to invest in Yahoo when the company gets created. The epilogue shows that he did just that.

* LockingMacGyverInTheStoreCupboard: The way Frank uses his firefighting knowledge to rig electrical wiring, a metal door, coffee, a spraycan and a lighter smacks of this.

* NewYorkCityCops

* MeanwhileInTheFuture: Both timelines run congruent to each other thirty years apart. When Frank affects something in 1969, John feels its affect at the same time of day in 1999.

In 2016, Creator/TheCW greenlit a television adaptation of the film; John Sullivan has undergone a GenderFlip into Raimy Sullivan (Creator/PeytonList), Frank has been made into a cop just like his daughter, and the concurrent timelines are now 1996 and 2016 (only a 20-year separation). Going undercover, he was murdered under circumstances which ruined his reputation and left his widowed wife and daughter alone and confused. The rest of the plot seems to be roughly the same as the film for now, albeit with Frank, having survived his assassination attempt, looking into the who's and why's of his murder.

[[quoteright:166:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Frequency-Movie-Poster.JPG]]

John Sullivan (Creator/JimCaviezel) is the adult son of a firefighter, Frank (Dennis Quaid), who died on the job when John was a child. John discovers that during the Aurora Borealis he can use his father's old ham radio to talk to him 30 years in the past. Using his knowledge of the past thirty years, John changes history, saving Frank from dying. They soon discover that changing the timeline has drastic consequences. A serial killer known as the Nightingale Killer had died in the old timeline - but in the new timeline, John's mother, a nurse, was not called away due to Frank's death, and thus she was able to prevent the killer's death in the hospital. In the erased timeline, the killer claimed only three victims - but in the new timeline he kills ten women, one of them John's mother.

In 2016, Creator/TheCW greenlit a television adaptation of the film; John Sullivan has undergone a GenderFlip into Raimy Sullivan (Creator/PeytonList), and Frank has been made into a cop just like his daughter. Going undercover, he was murdered under circumstances which ruined his reputation and left his widowed wife and daughter alone and confused. The rest of the plot seems to be roughly the same as the film for now, albeit with Frank, having survived his assassination attempt, looking into the who's and why's of his murder.

In 2016, Creator/TheCW greenlit a television adaptation of the film; John Sullivan has undergone a GenderFlip into Raimy Sullivan (Creator/PeytonList), but the plot seems to be largely the same for now.

* NiceJobFixingItVillain: [[spoiler:1999!Shepard saying "Time to die, Sullivan! Time to die!" to 1999!John gets picked up over the radio in 1969, distracting 1969!Shepard long enough for Julia to get the jump on him and Frank to shoot his hand off.]]

* NiceJobFixingItVillain: [[spoiler:1999!Shepard saying "Time to die, soldier." to 1999!John gets picked up over the radio in 1969, distracting 1969!Shepard long enough for Julia to get the jump on him.]]

* DelayedRippleEffect: Shows up in a few places, notably when [[spoiler:John makes the first notable change in the timelines]] and when [[spoiler: the killer is fighting both John and his father in both time periods.]]

* SanDimasTime: Possibly the best portrayed example in movie history.

* MeanwhileInTheFuture

!!This Movie Contains Examples of:

* BrickJoke: Yahoo

* TimeTravelForFunAndProfit: John drops a hint to his perenially unlucky friend to invest in Yahoo when the company gets created. The epilogue shows that he did just that.