History Fridge / QuantumLeap

* In "Killin' Time," Al clearly respects and trusts Gooshie as a friend: he counts on him to be the backup Observer, is willing to put his life on the line to protect him from Stiles, and they're implied to be friends outside of work. A year earlier in "The Leap Back," Ziggy casually mentions to Sam that Tina and Gooshie are having an affair. Yet one more reason Sam needed to keep Al and Beth together.

* In "How the Tess Was Won", Sam inspires a young Buddy Holly to write Peggy Sue. This implies that Sam is responsible for Holly's rise to fame, which ultimately resulted in his untimely death in a plane crash. However, the fact that Sam already knows of Holly and the song indicates that all he did was inspire him to write it earlier than he would have otherwise.

* Sam leapt into Lee Harvey Oswald in order to keep him from killing Jackie along with JFK, and this is accomplished by Sam leaping into different points in Oswald's life, and their minds slowly merging. But we know from the ending that Sam subconsciously controlled his leaping all along. [[SociopathicHero Did he think that "put right what once went wrong" meant he had to become like Oswald, to make sure Kennedy still died?]]

* Ziggy is able to uncover a ridiculous amount of information on people. "Another Mother" establishes that Ziggy knows that one of the kids mocking the leapee's son for being a virgin is still a virgin himself and will be for several years to come. This has some serious implications for how much surveillance the US government has been conducting on people for such a private piece of information about someone.

** Donna states that she does understand, knowing that he can't remember her and is doing it to improve the lives of those involved.

** And things wind up getting ''worse'' if you consider the following: "Disco Inferno" was ''also'' the leap where Sam remembered he had a brother that died in Vietnam. How is this relevant? In the second episode of Season 3, Sam ''does'' leap into Vietnam, in 1970, and winds up saving his brother... but, as he learns at the end (and Al [[HeroicSacrifice chose not to reveal]]), it was at the expense of Al's freedom. The mission his brother was on involved rescuing captured American soldiers. As a result of this leap, it would take ''two years longer'' to get Al rescued, and he wouldn't get back to America until ''1975''.[[note]]For the record, "Disco Inferno" took place in '''1976'''.[[/note]]

** That last bit is probably the worst part of the whole situation for Al. He'll likely always think that he absolutely could have saved her if he didn't "waste time" on something he wanted to do for himself.

** That last bit is probably the worst part of the whole situation for Al. He'll likely think he absolutely could have saved her if he didn't "waste time" on something he wanted to do for himself.

* Towards the end of "Roberto!", among the things Sam states is part of the next episode is "a personal story about the time [he] was kidnapped by aliens, and held in an all-white room". At first, this seems like a BrickJoke to the episode's RunningGag about aliens... until you realize that this is ''actually'' Sam future-proofing for when Roberto comes back when he leaps out. After all, there's a non-zero percent chance Roberto wouldn't remember ''some'' of being held in the Waiting Room back at the Project, right?[[note]]Plus, while it isn't until "A Leap for Lisa" that we learn the Waiting Room is actually ''blue'', even then, would Roberto ''really'' fixate on the color point?[[/note]]

* Towards the end of "Roberto!", among the things Sam states is part of the next episode is "a personal story about the time [he] was kidnapped by aliens, and held in an all-white room". At first, this seems like a BrickJoke to the episode's RunningGag about aliens... until you realize that this is ''actually'' Sam future-proofing for when Roberto comes back when he leaps out. After all, there's a non-zero percent chance Roberto wouldn't remember ''some'' of being held in the Waiting Room back at the Project, right?

* In the last episode, we learn that Sam is controlling his leaps. So why, in Last Dance Before Execution, did he wait until the very last moment before leaping? Because he didn't want Jesus to have a moment of realisation and horror before he died. Sam stayed as long as possible to spare him that.

* "The Curse Of Ptah-Hotep". If Razul isn't responsible for the mishaps at the camp--he was with Sam when the fire started and seems completely sincere in his insistence that he didn't kill Ali and Gamal, and in fact thought that one of the other two had--and some ancient curse isn't, then that means that ''Ginny'' is the killer and that by helping them escape, Sam just helped a murderer go free. NiceJobBreakingItHero

* It's equally horrifying to consider Diana Quinna's original date in "Private Dancer" of becoming a prostitute and dying of AIDS. To think of everyone she could have infected and who they could have infected, etc.

* At the conclusion of "Raped", Sam realizes his purpose when his leapee's rapist tries to assault her again and Sam beats the crap out of him. Awesome, but. . .Al mentions that in the original history, Katie left town after the trial and never returned. Was it from the humiliation of her ordeal, or because Kevin raped her a ''second'' time? It's good that Sam prevented that, but it's still horrifying to consider the possibility.

* Sam manages to beat up the kidnappers from ''Another Mother'' and rescue his leapee's son. All's well that ends well, right? Not so fast, they were in the middle of nowhere when it happened and cell phones weren't around in 1980, so even if Sam contacted the authorities, [[KarmaHoudini who's to say they were ever caught and didn't continue with some other kid(s)?]]

* During its original run and well into syndication, I couldn't stand ''Series/QuantumLeap'' -- the "rules" governing Sam's time travel made no ''sense'' to me. "He's bouncing around from time period to time period, and he's stuck in each life until he makes things... ''nice??''" One weekend, the [[Creator/{{Syfy}} Sci Fi Channel]] ran a marathon of the final episodes of various shows, and I happened to catch the finale of ''QL'', which reveals that the controlling impulse behind Sam's "leaping" is [[spoiler: his own subconscious drive to make the world a better place, one life at a time]] -- and I then proceeded to catch the show five days a week for the next few months. -- Tropers/YourObedientSerpent
** The other thing that I realized (then Googled and realized to my disappointment I wasn't the first) was that, especially clear during the last season, he was realigning the "Ziggy Version" of history to match our version and that after those "major" events in modern history were lined up, he was done except for one last thing (having Beth wait for Al) which completed the alignment and therefore returned to his "Ziggy History" timeline and disappeared from our timeline (thus ending the series) -- Tropers/GaidinBDJ

* Throughout the series, Sam displays a reluctance to engage in any sort of relations with women, a fact that Al laments constantly. Near the end of the show's run, it is revealed that Sam [[spoiler: is married]], and suddenly his hesitation can be interpreted as a subconscious reaction to [[spoiler: the possibility of cheating on his wife]]. It also gives a more unfortunate implication to the times when he does it anyway, though.

* The "Swiss cheese" memory effect as it pertains to Alia. Sam is able to uncover some sort of hidden morality in her (as opposed to Zoey, who seems to be very much a psychopath), so what kind of person was Alia before the evil organization got hold of her, and how long did they manipulate her amnesiac mind before Sam came along?

** There is a LOT of information that Sam reveals to others about PQL. Sam reveals a bunch of info about himself, PQL, Al, Ziggy, and Gooshie to Carol and Becky Pruitt in "Killin' Time," which was two leaps before Sam first encountered Alia.[[note]]Becky even tells that episode's sheriff that Leon Styles (the leapee) is actually Sam Beckett.[[/note]]

* In "The Leap Back," when Al drops the letter with the override code (and the $100) to the law firm, with instructions to deliver it on a specific date in the future (a la Back to the Future), the imaging chamber door immediately. This is because, as soon as Al dropped it in, there was no way for him to retrieve it. Hence, the "outside" time was when it was delivered, according to Gooshie, that very day.

* The "Swiss cheese" memory effect as it pertains to Alia. Sam is able to uncover some sort of hidden morality in her (as opposed to Zoey who seems to be very much a psychopath), so what kind of person was she before the evil organization got hold of her, and how long did they manipulate her amnesiac mind before Sam came along?

* Sam never returned home. Imagine spending the rest of your life in someone else's body other than your own thus robbing every ounce of your own identity.