History Series / TheTwilightZone

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''The Twilight Zone'' can refer to three different television series:

* ''Series/TheTwilightZone1959''
* ''Series/TheTwilightZone1985''
* ''Series/TheTwilightZone2002''

If an internal link brought you here, please correct it to refer to the right page.

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[[redirect:Series/TheTwilightZone1959]]

[[quoteright:330:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/twilight-zone.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:330:Your next stop... the Twilight Zone.]]

->''"There is a fifth dimension, beyond that which is known to Man. It is a dimension as vast as space, and as timeless as infinity. It is the middleground between light and shadow, between science and superstition; and it lies between the pit of Man's fears, and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call...[[TitleDrop the Twilight Zone]]."''
-->-- '''Creator/RodSerling''', the first OpeningNarration

One of television's most revered series, ''The Twilight Zone'' (Creator/{{CBS}}, 1959-64) stands as the role model for TV anthologies. Its trenchant sci-fi/fantasy parables explore humanity's hopes, despairs, prides, and prejudices in metaphoric ways conventional drama cannot.

Creator Creator/RodSerling wrote the majority of the scripts, and produced those of such now-legendary writers as Creator/RichardMatheson and Charles Beaumont. The series featured such soon-to-be-famous actors as Creator/RobertRedford, Creator/WilliamShatner, Burt Reynolds, Robert Duvall, Creator/DennisHopper, Carol Burnett, Creator/JamesCoburn, Creator/CharlesBronson, Creator/LeeMarvin, Peter Falk, Creator/DonaldPleasence and Bill Mumy, as well as such established stars as silent-film giant Creator/BusterKeaton, Art Carney, Mickey Rooney, Ida Lupino, and Creator/JohnCarradine.

''Film/TwilightZoneTheMovie'', a big-screen adaptation that featured individual segments produced by Creator/StevenSpielberg, Creator/JoeDante, Creator/JohnLandis and George Miller was released in 1983. Tragically, the movie is [[NeverLiveItDown better remembered]] for a [[GoneHorriblyWrong horrible accident]] in which three actors (two of them children) were killed during shooting of an action scene in Landis' segment.

[[Series/TheTwilightZone1985 An often worthy]] {{revival}} series ran on CBS from 1985-87, and in first-run syndication in 1988. [[Series/TheTwilightZone2002 Another revival]] ran on {{UPN}} in the 2002-2003 season, which reunited Bill Mumy and Cloris Leachman in a sequel to the classic TZ chiller ''ItsAGoodLife.'' A [[LicensedPinballTable licensed]] {{Pinball}} game, ''Pinball/TheTwilightZone'', was released in 1992, filled with references and {{Shout Out}}s to various episodes, and is today one of the most popular pinball games of all time. But it's the daring original series that shows every sign of lasting the ages as the literature that it is.

''The Twilight Zone'' had a rather remarkable ability to take silly story concepts, combine them with [[{{Anvilicious}} preachy, moralistic writing]], and produce some truly outstanding episodes. (Seriously, you think ''Series/TheWestWing'' was heavy-handed? Creator/AaronSorkin's got ''nothing'' on Rod Serling in full righteous-anger mode.) The ghost of UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler travels to the United States and teaches Creator/DennisHopper to become an effective demagogue ("He's Alive")? It works. A former concentration camp commander travels back to Dachau after UsefulNotes/WorldWarII and is put on trial by the ghosts of his victims ("Death's Head Revisited")? It works. Creator/WilliamShatner hams it up and yells about the monster on the wing of the plane ("Nightmare at 20,000 Feet")? It works.

Almost all episodes ended with {{A|nAesop}}esops; "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder," "Be tolerant," "Democracy is good," etc. Occasionally, however, you'd get a FamilyUnfriendlyAesop. Perhaps the most notorious example was the episode "Time Enough At Last," which starred Burgess Meredith and seemed to tell the viewer, "Even if you are a good and decent man, you can still have horrible things continually happen to you and end up with no hope at all", and became one of the most famous episodes of the original series. Other notorious examples are episodes that use recycled scripting employing a family unfriendly Aesop version of the original episode's end in order to force a (rather disturbing, especially in the context of the original episode) twist. Other times, aesops conflict with one another. "The Gift" tells you not to be bigots toward aliens, because they might just be bringing you the cure for cancer. But "To Serve Man" has all of humanity accepting and tolerant of aliens, which [[ToServeMan turns out to be a bad thing.]]

Many television shows have [[AffectionateParody borrowed liberally]] from the ''Twilight Zone'', especially ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons Treehouse of Horror'' and ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'''s "[[ShowWithinAShow The Scary]] [[AffectionateParody Door]]" and "Anthology of Interest".

There's also been a thrill-ride inspired by the series in [[Ride/DisneyThemeParks Walt Disney World]] which inspired its own non-canon film in 1994.

See also the episode [[Recap/TheTwilightZone Recap page]].

The show has a [[http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/crowner.php/BestEpisode/TheTwilightZone Best Episode Crowner]].

%% The recap page is in need of some WikiMagic.
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%% Trope Namer is trivia and go in the Trivia tab.
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!!Submitted for your approval... your next stop, the [=Tropelight=] Zone":

* AcquiredPoisonImmunity: "The Jeopardy Room".
* AdamAndEvePlot: [[spoiler:"Two", and more literally "Probe 7 - Over and Out".]]
* AdaptationExpansion: Due to being anywhere from 5-10 minutes longer than the episodes they're based on, the radio adaptations of the episodes tended to add in additional material to make up for the length ("Time Enough at Last", for example, added in a character who's pretty much the only person actually nice to the protagonist of the story).
* AdultFear: The show was full of this in addition to more supernatural threats. The episode "In Praise of Pip" shows a bookie receiving news that his son Pip, who has gone to Indochina in the opening months of what is about to become UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar, has been seriously wounded in combat and is possibly dying. The rest of the episode revolves around the man hallucinating(?) that Pip is a ten year old boy again while he is dying of a gunshot wound. In what is a massively sad scene, he begs his son not to die and apologizes for not being a better father and role model to him while promising to do better, even though he realizes it may be too late for both of them. [[spoiler:In the end, the father [[HeroicSacrifice trades his own life for Pip's]].]]
* AnAesop: OncePerEpisode, with some exceptions.
* AfterTheEnd: "Time Enough At Last", "The Old Man in the Cave". "Two".
* TheAgeless: Walter Jameson, from The Twilight Zone episode "Long Live Walter Jameson", was granted this form of immortality in Ancient Greece by an alchemist. He says that he came close to death many times over the centuries due to injuries and disease, "but never close enough". [[spoiler: At the end of the episode when he is shot, he begins to age rapidly as he dies until he is nothing but a pile of dust.]]
* AIIsACrapshoot: "From Agnes - With Love". The AI begins falling in love with whoever's been trying to deal with Agnes' "problem".
* AliensSpeakingEnglish: Pretty consistently played straight. Averted in [[spoiler:"The Invaders"]].
* AllJustADream: [[spoiler:"Where Is Everybody?", "Perchance to Dream", "The Arrival", "The Midnight Sun", "Person or Persons Unknown" (with an added twist), "The Time Element" (also with an added twist), "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge"]]. Also, see DeadAllAlong below.
* TheAloner: "Where Is Everybody?", "King Nine Will Not Return", and "Nervous Man in a Four-Dollar Room."
* AlwaysABiggerFish: "[[spoiler:The Little People]]".
* AmbiguousDisorder: Horace Ford in the episode "The Incredible World of Horace Ford" acts like a small child and often has NoIndoorVoice, but he's a brilliant designer. Also, he keeps bouncing around and never seems to focus on one subject.
* UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar: The setting of "The Passersby", "Still Valley", and "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge". Also mentioned in "Long Live Walter Jameson" (see ExpositionOfImmortality below) .
* AncientKeeper: "Elegy".
* AndIMustScream: "A Kind of Stopwatch" has a notable one; there are probably many more of them.
* ArtShift: In "OnceUponATime", the story partly takes place in 1890, where the format changes to that of a silent movie, complete with cutaways to subtitles and an overlaid piano track.
* AssholeVictim:
** When a protagonist is driven to murder, it usually involves being pushed over the edge by one of these. Not that this protects them from LaserGuidedKarma, mind you...
** Some of the protagonists also qualify, such as Archibald Beechcroft from "The Mind and the Matter". Most of them, though, learn their lesson by the end.
* AuthorAvatar:
** According to biographies, "A Stop At Willoughby" was Serling's favorite episode, and he identified with the main character. The stops on the Northeast line were the same stops on the commute he made into Manhattan daily.
** "Walking Distance" was another of Serling's favorite episodes. The old-fashioned town in the story is based on the town he grew up in and the main character (as an adult and a little boy) was based on him.
* BackFromTheDead: "The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank", "Mr. Garrity and the Graves"; "Father and Son Game" (1985 revival).
* BalancingDeathsBooks: "One for the Angels", "In Praise of Pip".
* BandagedFace: TheReveal of a few episodes involved one of these, perhaps most famously in [[spoiler:"Eye of the Beholder"]].
* BankTeller:
** "Time Enough at Last". A bank teller is the sole survivor of a nuclear attack.
** "A Penny for Your Thoughts". A bank teller develops mind-reading abilities after he drops a coin that lands on its edge.
* BarredFromTheAfterlife: Hyder Simpson in "The Hunt" does this to himself. He's allowed into heaven, but he isn't allowed to take his dog Rip with him. He decides that an afterlife without his dog is a fate worse than death (so to speak), so he refuses to enter and will just wander the path in between heaven & hell forever. Turns out that wasn't heaven, it was hell. Heaven allows dogs in.
* BaseballEpisode: "The Mighty Casey".
* BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor: Many. A few examples include "The Chaser", "The Last Night of a Jockey", "A Game of Pool", and "Jess-Belle".
** The advice is followed in "I Dream Of Genie". The protagonist thinks out several wishes he could make and realizes that they would all end in him being miserable. After discarding love, wealth, and power, he finally wishes to [[spoiler:be a genie himself so he can help the needy.]]
** "Time Enough at Last" [[PlayingWithATrope plays with]] this trope: Burgess Meredith's character never ''wishes'' for what eventually happens to happen, but he's always griping about never having enough time for his true love, reading. [[spoiler:Then a nuclear apocalypse happens. ''[[ButtMonkey Then]]'' [[ButtMonkey his glasses break, just as he's settling down with his books]].]]
* BeYourself: The protagonist of "Mr. Bevis" learns this {{A|nAesop}}esop after his GuardianAngel makes him a SlaveToPR.
* BecomingTheCostume: [[spoiler:"The Masks" and "Night of the Meek"]].
* BecomingTheGenie: "I Dream of Genie". [[spoiler: however, unlike most versions, this is an entirely voluntary example]].
* BettyAndVeronica: In "A World of His Own", Gregory West is married to a Veronica and [[spoiler:has just created]] a Betty.
* BewareOfHitchhikingGhosts: "The Hitch-Hiker".
* BigBrotherIsWatching: Implied in "Third From the Sun".
* ABirthdayNotABreak: In "The Shelter", a suburban doctor's birthday party turns into a mad scramble for survival when a nuclear alert is announced--and the doctor's fallout shelter has only enough room for himself and his family.
* BlatantLies: "There is nothing ulterior in our motives. ''Nothing at all''."
* BornInTheWrongCentury: "Once Upon A Time". "No Time Like the Past".
* BotheringByTheBook: Death does this in "One for the Angels", at least partially to [[HoistByHisOwnPetard get some mild revenge on the pitch-man that had duped him]].
* BottleEpisode: Several, including "The Whole Truth". A good tell is if the episode is on tape instead of film.
* TheBoxingEpisode: "The Big Tall Wish" and "Steel".
* BreakingTheFourthWall:
** Rod Serling not only provides narration, frequently on-camera, but he actually becomes part of the story in "A World of His Own." Temporarily, at least.
** In "One For The Angels", Mr. Death suddenly looks up at the camera as Serling identifies him in his opening narration.
** In "Number 12 Looks Just Like You", just as Rod Serling mentions being beautiful, Marilyn, who up until this point had been a free spirited young girl and is now a conformist looking exactly like her friend Val, looks directly into the camera when Serling muses if this might be possible in the near future.
* BreakHisHeartToSaveHim: "The Trouble With Templeton", focusing on a washed-up old actor who still clings to the memory of his dead wife while the present and future seem horrendously bleak. [[spoiler:He seems to have finally reunited with his wife, but she acts strange and old, before telling him to leave a party they're attending, filled with actors he used to know. It turned out it was part of a play staged by the dead to get him to move on and focus on the present. It works: he demands a bigger role, tells off a jerk co-actor, and takes a younger actor under his wing.]]
* BreakTheHaughty: Used in many, many episodes. "Four O'Clock" and "A Piano in the House" come to mind.
* BrownNote: [[spoiler:How Frisby's harmonica affects the aliens]] in "Hocus Pocus and Frisby".
* TheButlerDidIt: In "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?", a group of people get off a bus and gather at a cafe where they are served food and drinks by the local counter jerk and dine. It is later revealed by the police that one of the people on the bus seems to have been an alien. TenLittleMurderVictims ensues, the resolution of which is only a half-subversion of TheButlerDidIt: [[spoiler:one of the people from the bus ''was'' The Mole, but the cafe worker who served them all and remained very much in the background throughout the story was also an enemy alien from a different planet, and was two steps ahead of The Mole the whole time.]]
* ButterFace: [[spoiler:What the process does, and everyone else, in "Eye of the Beholder" (aka "The Private World of Darkness").]]
** Toyed with in "The Masks".
* ButtMonkey:
** Henry Bemis of "Time Enough At Last". This man cannot catch a break.
** Burgess Meredith was kind of the master at this; see also "Mr. Dingle the Strong".
** Also, the titular "Mr. Bevis".
* TheCaligula: The main character of "The Mirror".
* CallingYourShots: In the episode "A Game of Pool", Fats and Jesse call their shots in [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin a game of pool.]] The most impressive shot is when Jesse calls the side pocket after bouncing off three banks and making it.
* CameBackWrong: "The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank".
* CanonSue: InUniverse; the main character in "Showdown with Rance [=McGrew=]" plays one in a TV Western...and Jesse James isn't pleased with it at all.
* CaptivityHarmonica: In the episode "Shadow Play", and used [[spoiler:to escape]] in "Hocus-Pocus and Frisby". In "Shadow Play", Adam acknowledges it's a trope, saying he learned it from watching prison movies.
* CassandraTruth: "Back There", "The Time Element", "No Time like the Past".
* {{Catchphrase}}: "Submitted for your consideration/approval". "...in [[TitleDrop the Twilight Zone]]."
* CharacteristicTrope
* ChekhovsArmoury: [[spoiler:"The New Exhibit".]]
* ChessWithDeath: "One for the Angels".
* ChristmasEpisode: "Night of the Meek".
* CigaretteOfAnxiety: The lead character of the episode "Nervous Man in a Four Dollar Hotel Room" tries to light up to relieve the stress of being called on to kill someone for the first time. He can't because he's out of matches. His reflection, on the other hand, happily puffs away while berating him.
* ClingyMacGuffin: Of the more nightmarish variety -- "[[CreepyDoll Talky Tina]]" and a guitar.
* {{Cloudcuckoolander}}: Mr Bevis.
* ComicBookAdaptation: Dell Comics published two issues in 1962, after which Gold Key picked up the ball and continued publishing a ''Twlight Zone''-based comic book until 1982. Now Comics published a ''Twlight Zone'' comic in the 1990s, and in the last few years Walker & Co. has published several graphic novels adapting specific episodes of the original series, updated to today in some cases. The Gold Key title ramped up the creepiness factor by continuing to feature a cartoon version of Rod Serling introducing each story, even years after the real Serling died.
* ConvenientlyCoherentThoughts: In the episode "A Penny For Your Thoughts", the protagonist gains the ability to read minds, and hears a disgruntled bank employee planning to rob the bank. After he denounces him, though, it turns out that the man's been idly ''thinking'' about robbing the bank for years, but he'd never actually go through with it.
* ConvenientlyInterruptedDocument: In "The Gift", an alien brings a message to the people of Earth. The alien gets killed and the message burned. Then someone reads the message, which is something like, "As a symbol of our friendship we offer the following, a cure for all forms of cancer." The rest is burned away.
* CoolOldLady: Aunt T. in "The Bewitchin' Pool".
* {{The Corrupter}}s: The aliens in "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street", of the exacerbate-preexisting-character-flaws variety. They qualify as {{Magnificent Bastard}}s because [[spoiler:their corrupting of the people is all done by suggestion and playing on fears; they never show themselves]].
* CorruptCorporateExecutive: William J. Feathersmith in "Of Late I Think of Cliffordville", Wallace V. Whipple in "The Brain Center at Whipple's" and Alan Richards in "The Jungle".
* CosmicHorrorStory: "And When the Sky was Opened".
* CrazyMemory: "Hocus-Pocus and Frisby" is about a man who tells outrageous lies to his friends about his past... and is promptly kidnapped by aliens, who think his lies are true.
* CreepyChild: Anthony in "It's a Good Life", Markie in "Nightmare as a Child".
* CreepyDoll[=/=]TheDollEpisode: "Living Doll", "Caesar and Me", "The Dummy".
* CripplingTheCompetition: In "Mr. Denton on Doomsday", the title character, a washed up RetiredGunfighter faces off against a young wannabee in a duel, both using a potion granting quick draw abilities. Both men manage to inflict hand injuries preventing each other from ever using guns again. Denton sees this as a blessing, as it will prevent either from engaging in any more reckless duels.
* CruelTwistEnding:
** "Time Enough at Last".
** Lesser known examples include "The Purple Testament", "Young Man's Fancy", "Number 12 Looks Just Like You", "Black Leather Jackets", "What's in the Box?" and "Caesar and Me".
** And most of the 2002 revival.
* TheCuckoolanderWasRight: [[spoiler:In "Will The Real Martian Please Stand Up?", the old man (played by Jack Elam) accuses Mr. Ross of being the "most suspicious of the bunch". Jack Elam's character also suggests that they check under Ross's coat for wings. Had they done so, they would have seen his third arm and known he was the real Martian.]]
* DangerTakesABackSeat: "The Hitch-Hiker".
-->"I believe you're going my way..."
* DarkIsNotEvil: Death in "Nothing in the Dark".
** And before that in "One for the Angels"
* TheDarknessGazesBack: In "The Riddle of the Crypt", this happens twice to Irene Morrow. The first time she sees yellow eyes in the darkness it turns out to be a large owl, which attacks her. The second time it's a vampire that wants to drain her blood.
* DeadAllAlong: Episodes [[spoiler:"Judgment Night", "The Hitch-Hiker", "The Passersby", (one possible interpretation of) "The Thirty-Fathom Grave", "Deaths-Head Revisited", "Death Ship", and "Ring-a-Ding Girl".]]
* DeadToBeginWith: "A Nice Place to Visit", "A Game of Pool", "The Hunt".
* DealWithTheDevil:
** "Escape Clause", "Printer's Devil", "Of Late I Think of Cliffordville".
** Surprisingly subverted [[spoiler:in "Still Valley"]].
* DeathOfPersonality:
** In "Nervous Man in a Four Dollar Room", a cowardly criminal is confronted by his better self, on the other side of a mirror. Eventually the other personality takes over. This is a rare example of this trope being a HappyEnding.
** In "The Lateness of the Hour", a woman discovers that she is actually a robot. Unable to cope, she goes mad and her "parents" reprogram her as a maid, effectively destroying her personality.
* DeathTrap: "The Jeopardy Room".
* DeliberateValuesDissonance: "No Time Like the Past".
* DevilInDisguise: The Devil usually appears in the guise of a regular person. In "The Howling Man" he appears to be some poor guy who's been imprisoned by a madman, but when someone takes pity and releases him his horns and tail reappear.
* DisproportionateRetribution: "Time Enough at Last".
* DivideAndConquer[=/=]AHouseDivided: [[spoiler:"The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street".]]
* DivingSave: The robot grandmother near the end of "[[Creator/RayBradbury I Sing the Body Electric]]".
* DivineIntervention: Possibly in "I Am the Night - ColorMeBlack". The Sun fails to rise on the day of a man's execution, and, [[spoiler:once Jagger's been hanged, the darkness starts spreading everywhere]].
* DoesNotLikeShoes: Norma in "The Midnight Sun" is barefoot for the entire episode. {{Justified}} because the story's premise is the Earth heating up as it moves closer to the sun.
* DontFearTheReaper: "Nothing in the Dark", in which a young Creator/RobertRedford plays a gentle, well-meaning version of TheGrimReaper. Also, [[spoiler:"The Hitch-hiker".]]
* {{Doppelganger}}: "Mirror Image", "Nervous Man in a Four Dollar Room", "In His Image".
* DreamApocalypse: [[spoiler:"Shadow Play".]]
* DrippingDisturbance: This is one of the ordinary noises played with in "Sounds and Silences".
* DroppedGlasses: [[spoiler:"Time Enough at Last".]]
* DumbBlonde: In "Penny For Your Thoughts", the main character hears the thoughts of anyone standing near him. When tries to read the mind of a blonde woman in the bank, [[BrainlessBeauty he can't hear anything.]]
* EarthAllAlong: [[spoiler:"I Shot an Arrow into the Air", "Probe 7 - Over and Out". Inverted in "Third from the Sun" and "The Invaders".]]
* TheEndingChangesEverything: Pretty much every episode.
* EnfantTerrible: Anthony Fremont in "It's a Good Life", Susan in "Caesar and Me".
* EmptyPilesOfClothing: The fate of two characters in "Long Live Walter Jameson" and "Queen of the Nile".
* EpisodeOnAPlane: Most famously in "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet". Also in "The Odyssey Of Flight 33".
* EquivalentExchange
* EverybodySmokes: What with the show being made in the 60's.
* EveryEpisodeEnding: Nearly every episode ends with a short commentary from Rod Serling, usually to deliver AnAesop, almost always ending with "...in the [[TitleDrop Twilight Zone]]."
* EvilCannotComprehendGood: Mr. Radin in "One More Pallbearer" sets up a fake bomb scare scenario and expects three people who once humiliated him in the past to make them apologize to him, and he seems mystified that they would rather spend their last moments with their loved ones than try to save themselves.
* EvilDetectingDog: In the episode "The Hunt". "A man will walk into hell with both eyes open, but even the Devil can't fool a dog."
* EvilMask: "The Masks", obviously.
* EvenEvilHasStandards: In "Of Late I Think of Cliffordville". Miss Devlin is a manipulative devil, and ordinarily maintains a charming persona when dealing with Feathersmith. However, during her final [[TheReasonYouSuckSpeech dressing down]] of Feathersmith and his faults, she allows herself to slip into some genuine anger.
* ExactWords: To ''Serve'' Man.
* ExpositionOfImmortality: In the episode "Long Live Walter Jameson," the titular character is a history professor who knows his stuff, has a retiring colleague who comments on his appearance and who is seen in an [[UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar American Civil War]] period picture, revealing just how he knows that period so very well.
* {{Expy}}: A year before Dennis Weaver played a man afraid to go to sleep in the episode "Shadow Play", he played a man with the opposite problem in the ''AlfredHitchcockPresents'' episode "Insomnia".
* FalseInnocenceTrick: "The Howling Man" is basically one of these from start to end.
* FantasticAnthropologist: "Mr. Dingle the Strong".
* FatteningTheVictim: In the episode "To Serve Man", after the hero discovers the alien Kanamits eat the humans they take to their planet as "ambassadors", he is taken prisoner aboard their ship. In the last scene a Kamamit is exhorting him to eat his dinner.
* FishOutOfTemporalWater: The lead characters of the TimeTravel episodes, especially "Execution".
* FiveFiveFive: "Night Call" used the KL-5 variant.
* FortuneTeller: A little coin-operated fortune-telling machine in a diner, that answers yes-or-no questions, in "Nick of Time". A superstitious WilliamShatner starts to think it's giving out accurate answers and gets obsessed, and his wife tries to talk sense into him. This is a definite case of MaybeMagicMaybeMundane, and a lot of questions if it is magic. All of the following are possible: the machine accurately predicted the future as it was meant to, it was designed for/attempted to trap people (which would be a lot of trouble for a few pennies), its only ability was to make you ''think'' it made accurate predictions, or it was in fact an ordinary machine and the seemingly accurate predictions were a series of improbable coincidences.
* FreshClue: In "Where is Everybody?", a man finds himself all alone in a deserted town with a case of amnesia. While he's exploring a police station he finds a lit cigar smoldering in an ashtray. When he looks in a cell he finds a sink with the water running and shaving equipment (including a brush with wet shaving cream) sitting around. All of this is evidence that someone was there not too long ago. The TwilightZoneTwist is that he's actually in a [[spoiler:hallucination caused by isolation]]. Watch it [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWgLiuDAaAw#t=19m30s here]].
* FutureMeScaresMe: [[spoiler:"Spur of the Moment" and "Walking Distance". {{I|HatePastMe}}nverted in "Nightmare as a Child".]]
* {{Gaslighting}}: "What's In the Box?" : Joe accuses his wife and the TV repairman of plotting to drive him crazy after his recently fixed TV shows him incriminating scenes of his life.
* GenreAnthology
* GenreBlindness: Some of the protagonists are a bit slow to realize they're in a paranormal situation. For instance, Hector spends half an episode reading people's minds in "A Penny for Your Thoughts" before realizing that no, they're not talking out loud while somehow keeping their mouths closed.
* GetAHoldOfYourselfMan: Captain Ross to Lieutenant Mason in "Death Ship".
* GetBackToTheFuture: "The Odyssey of Flight 33".
* GettingCrapPastTheRadar: Not "crap" per se, but let's just say that Mr. Serling was often a bit more progressive than TV censors felt comfortable with. Wrapping what he wanted to say up in sci-fi allowed him to get more powerful messages on broadcast television.
* AGodAmI: "The Little People", "On Thursday We Leave For Home".
* GovernmentDrugEnforcement: Several episodes.
* GreekChorus: Rod Serling starting with "A World Of His Own." [[spoiler: [[TheFourthWallWillNotProtectYou He picked a bad time to start appearing on screen.]] ]]
* TheGrimReaper: "One for the Angels", "Nothing in the Dark" (played by Creator/RobertRedford!), "[[spoiler:The Hitch-Hiker]]".
* GrowBeyondTheirProgramming
* GuardianAngel: J. Hardy Hempstead in "Mr. Bevis".
* GuineaPigFamily: "Mute".
* HairTriggerTemper: Simon and Barbara in "Uncle Simon", especially to each other.
* HauntedTechnology: "The Fever", "A Thing About Machines", "Living Doll".
* HaveAGayOldTime: In "Caesar and Me", unsuccessful ventriloquist Jonathan West breaks into a nightclub at the insistence of his evil dummy, Caesar. While there, they are found by the night watchman, who starts asking them questions. Caesar's response: "Who are you, the house dick?" At the time, "dick" was slang for a detective, but today, the idea of a "house dick" in a nightclub might bring something else to mind.
* HeadsTailsEdge: "Penny for Your Thoughts".
* HeelFaceDoorSlam
* HellOfAHeaven: "The Hunt" [[PlayingWithATrope plays with]] this trope.
* HenpeckedHusband: Henry Bemis, in "Time Enough at Last".
* HereWeGoAgain:
** In "Judgment Night", U-Boat captain Carl Lanser is [[spoiler:doomed to endlessly relive the sinking of a ship which he ordered torpedoed, but as a passenger on the ship with only a vague sense of impending disaster.]]
** In "Mr. Dingle the Strong", Luther Dingle's superhuman strength has [[spoiler:been revoked by his Martian benefactors, who found his use of it disappointing - but a group of Venusians have just given him superhuman intelligence, beginning the cycle anew.]]
** In "Shadow Play", convicted murder Adam Grant tries to persuade everyone around him that his impending execution by electric chair is just his own nightmare. At the end of the episode, [[spoiler:he is executed, and wakes up from the "nightmare" to be sentenced to death again, but with the "roles" in his dream rotated among those who played them]].
** In "Dead Man's Shoes", the homeless man who put on the dead mobster's shoes [[spoiler:and was taken over by his spirit to avenge his death is shot and killed - and another homeless man finds his body and puts on the shoes]].
** In "Person or Persons Unknown", David Gurney wakes up to find that all evidence that he ever existed, including other people's memories of him, seems to have vanished. The episode ends with [[spoiler:Gurney waking up from a nightmare - to discover that his wife, though she acts and talks as she has always done, looks nothing like he remembers]].
** In "Death Ship", a trio of astronauts land on a barren planet to discover a wrecked copy of their ship and their own dead bodies in the cockpit. Eventually, they decide that it must be a hallucination to discourage them from landing and collecting samples, but at the end of the episode, [[spoiler:they find themselves reliving their original decision to land on the planet to explore it]].
** In "Uncle Simon", Barbara Polk looks after her rich but cruel inventor uncle, Simon, purely because she is his only heir and aims to inherit his fortune when he dies. When he does die, she is freed from his cruelty, but his will requires her to look after his final invention, a robot [[spoiler:which eventually takes on his voice and personality, and she ends the episode as she began it, listlessly bringing hot chocolate to her ungrateful, now robotic, uncle]].
** In "From Agnes - With Love", computer programmer James Elwood tries to fix a bug in Agnes, an office computer, which his predecessor could not solve. However, Agnes falls in love with him and begins breaking her programming - just as she did with his predecessor. At the end of the episode, [[spoiler:Elwood is told to go on leave by his employer, and it is implied that Agnes will fall in love with his replacement as well]].
** In "Spur of the Moment", Anne Henderson sees a woman in black screaming her name from a hilltop and flees in terror. She later determines that the woman was [[spoiler:her older self, trying to warn her against marrying the wrong man. Eventually, she sees her younger self and tries to give her the same warning, but her younger self flees in terror]].
** In "Queen of the Nile", columnist Jordan Herrick interviews actress Pamela Morris, who has somehow remained youthful despite her long screen career. He learns [[spoiler:the hard way that she feeds off the life of young people around her using an Egyptian scarab - she is, in fact, Queen Cleopatra VII of Egypt, now over two thousand years old. As the episode ends, another columnist arrives for an interview]].
** In "The Time Element", bartender Peter Jenson tries to warn the personnel at Pearl Harbor of the impending Japanese attack - which he knows will happen as [[spoiler:he was killed in the attack and has been reliving it ever since]].
** Implied in "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street," as [[spoiler: the aliens state that this will happen again, and again on other streets, much like the first.]]
** Creator/RodSerling states the oh-so-familiar BigBad of "He's Alive" will continue to "offer advice" again and again indefinitely in his closing speech.
* HijackedByGanon: "He's Alive" has [[spoiler:UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler hijacking a neo-Nazi campaign]].
* HilarityEnsues: "The Whole Truth"
* HistoricalDomainCharacter:
** UsefulNotes/AbrahamLincoln appears briefly in "Back There" and "The Passersby".
** UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler is used as a character in [[spoiler:"The Man in the Bottle" and "He's Alive"]].
** Creator/WilliamShakespeare in "The Bard".
* HitlersTimeTravelExemptionAct: "No Time Like the Past".
* HoistByHisOwnPetard: [[spoiler: "The Jeopardy Room", "The Brain Centre at Whipple's".]]
* HonestJohnsDealership: "The Whole Truth."
* HopeSpot:
** "Five Characters in Search of an Exit" ends with one.
** "The Midnight Sun" does a rather cruel one. Over the course of the episode, [[ApocalypseHow the Earth is getting closer and closer to the Sun, and everyone is pretty much doomed.]] But wait, [[spoiler: it's AllJustADream! The Earth isn't moving closer to the Sun, and no one is going to roast to death. The bad news: the Earth is actually moving ''away'' from the Sun, and everyone will freeze to death in total darkness instead.]]
* HotAsHell: "Of Late I Think of Cliffordville," starring Julie Newmar as {{Satan}}.
* HowWeGotHere: "To Serve Man".
* HumanAliens:
** Part of the plot of "People Are Alike All Over." [[spoiler: The protagonists of "Third from the Sun."]]
** [[spoiler: "Probe 7, Over and Out"]].
* HumanLadder: "Five Characters in Search of an Exit."
* HumanPopsicle: "The Rip Van Winkle Caper," "The Long Morrow."
* HumansAreBastards: [[spoiler:"I Shot an Arrow Into the Air", "The Invaders", "The Gift", "The Shelter", "I Am the Night - Color Me Black", and most famously, "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street", where the aliens plan to utilize humanity's own self-hatred, loathing, and fear to destroy the Earth, block by block.]]
* HumansAreCthulhu: "The Little People".
* HumansThroughAlienEyes: [[spoiler:"The Invaders".]]
* IdiotBall: In "He's Alive", where Hitler somehow survived (or returned from the dead), and is helping a bigot revive Nazism, they plot a false flag operation, in which one of the bigot's associates is killed and they frame the Jews. They pick up the IdiotBall when they leave a message at the crime scene, calling the victim "a good Nazi", completely oblivious to the fact that no one would call someone a good Nazi except another Nazi. It isn't surprising when the police quickly catch on to the ruse.
* ImAHumanitarian: [[spoiler:"To Serve Man."]]
* ImmortalityImmorality: "Love Live Walter Jameson", "Queen of the Nile".
* ImportedAlienPhlebotinum
* InertialImpalement: In "The Once And Future King," Gary Pitkin, an Elvis impersonator, gets transported to 1953, where he meets the real Elvis Presley. At first, Elvis thinks Gary is his stillborn brother Jesse, BackFromTheDead. However, when Gary begins coaching Elvis about his music, Elvis is reviled. The two men begin to fight, breaking a guitar at the neck. Then Elvis lunges at Gary; Gary rolls aside, and Elvis impales himself fatally on the jagged guitar neck.
* InstrumentalThemeTune: There were actually two of them. The first season featured a haunting, string-laden theme composed by Music/BernardHerrmann; this was replaced in Season 2 with a different and much more familiar theme (featuring the iconic high-pitched four-note guitar riff) composed by Marius Constant.
* InteractiveNarrator: At the end of "A World of His Own", Rod Serling appears to give his closing speech, only to be interrupted and then erased by Gregory's RealityWarper powers (complete with a ThisIsGonnaSuck remark from Rod before he vanishes). This was actually his very first onscreen appearance: it proved so popular that it set the tradition of him appearing onscreen to give the episode narration.
* IronicDeath:
** "A Most Unusual Camera". After the [[spoiler:main characters]] die, the waiter smugly counts the number of bodies: [[spoiler:"One... two... three... ''FOUR?!''"]] Cue screaming.
** The [[spoiler:Chancellor]] in "The Obsolete Man".
* IronicEcho:
** Wordsworth does this to the Chancellor a couple of times in the penultimate scene of "The Obsolete Man:"
--->'''Wordsworth:''' You're cheating the audience. Face the camera.\\
''((later))''\\
'''Wordsworth:''' You must face the camera. It's very important. [[LampshadeHanging You said so yourself.]]
** The semi-TitleDrop of "People Are Alike All Over".
--->'''Marcusson:''' Don't be afraid Sam! I've got a hunch... if there's anyone out there, they'll help you... As long as they have hearts and minds, they have souls! That makes them people! And... people are alike... [-[[FamousLastWords they're]] ''[[{{Foreshadowing}} bound]]'' [[{{Irony}} to be a-like...]]-]\\
''((later))''\\
'''Sam''' ''(inside [[spoiler:a Martian zoo]])'': Marcusson! Marcusson, you were right! You were right... People are alike... ''people are alike everywhere''...
* IronicHell: "A Game of Pool" and "A Nice Place to Visit".
* IsThisAJoke: Standard Explanation for anything unusual and unexplainable.
* ItsAlwaysMardiGrasInNewOrleans: "The Masks."
* UsefulNotes/JackTheRipper: In "The New Exhibit" Martin Balsam plays the curator of a wax museum who becomes so obsessed by five wax figures of murderers, including Jack the Ripper, that he commits murder to protect them.
* JerkassFacade: Fitzgerald Fortune from "A Piano in the House" is an arrogant bully because he secretly has the emotional maturity of a child. He is afraid of people, and as a result acts like an insufferable dick to everyone around him. He's even shown to be a LovingBully (of the emotional variety) towards his wife because of it. In the end, the piano makes him reveal this to everybody in the room.
* JobStealingRobot: The plot of "The Brain Center at Whipple's".
* KafkaKomedy: "Time Enough At Last".
* KarmaHoudini: This trope is {{averted}} through most of the series, but shows up in some fifth season episodes (such as [[spoiler:"What's in the Box?" and "Caesar and Me"]]). In his book ''The Twilight Zone Companion'', Marc Scott Zicree identifies this as a symptom of SeasonalRot.
* KarmicTwistEnding: Former {{Trope Namer|s}} as ''Twilight Zone Twist''.
* LanguageBarrier:
** "Probe 7 - Over and Out". Two space travelers from different ethnic groups, a man and a woman, are stranded on a planet. After they meet, they have to learn how to communicate with each other.
** "Two". Two soldiers who survived an apocalyptic war, a man and a woman, are wandering in a deserted city. After they meet, they have to learn how to communicate.
** ''The New Twilight Zone'' episode "Wordplay". A man starts hearing wrong words in other people's speech. The number of wrong words increases until all the man can hear is them. The episode ends with him starting to learn the "wrong word" version of English so he can understand everyone else.
* LargeHam: More often than not, an episode will have at ''least'' one.
** Creator/RodSerling himself is a pretty big ham almost constantly in his narrations.
** Creator/WilliamShatner stars up in two episodes. (Although to be fair to Mr Shatner, he is quite reserved in his acting in "Nick Of Time". Which is ironically likely the reason most people only remember his other ''Zone'' episode, "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet".)
** "The Obsolete Man" is filled to the brim with ham...and some interpretative dance towards the end.
* LaserGuidedKarma: "Judgement Night", "Death's Head Revisited."
* LaughTrack:
** The PoorlyDisguisedPilot "Cavender is Coming" featured a laugh track during its original showing and early syndication. It was removed from the syndication prints in the mid eighties.
** The Night Club scenes in the episode "The Dummy" have an obvious laugh track standing in for the audience laughter.
* LifeDrinker:
** The title character in "The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross" found that he could obtain abstract or otherwise normally non-transferable attributes from other people by simply making the deal with them. Among other attributes, he restored his youth by "buying" it from younger men who thought him to be a kook giving them money for nothing. He only took a year from each man, but was able to become young again. Incidentally, he was only an old man because he had previously sold his own youth to an elderly millionaire (he came out financially ahead after the exchanges were complete).
** "Queen of the Nile". A woman uses a scarab beetle to drain the life force of men so she can maintain her eternal youth. It's implied that she's the actual Cleopatra of Egypt.
* {{Lilliputians}}: "The Little People", [[spoiler:"The Fear".]]
* LookMaNoPlane: "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet".
* LouisCypher: "The Chaser" features a character named Professor A. Daemon. His name is suspicious enough to make the viewer wonder about his true nature, albeit that doesn't seem the case [[spoiler: at least until the end of the episode.]]
* LovePotion: "The Chaser".
* MagicRealism
* MagicalSeventhSon: In the episode "Still Valley", a Confederate soldier met an old man who had magical powers because he was the seventh son of a seventh son. He also had a DealWithTheDevil thing going on.
* MandatoryTwistEnding: The TwistEnding was a major staple of the series that earned the show a reputation for this, though it wasn't quite as "mandatory" as it's remembered as being.
* MatterOfLifeAndDeath: "Perchance to Dream".
* MaybeMagicMaybeMundane: "The Thirty-Fathom Grave"
* MeaninglessVillainVictory: In "The Rip Van Winkle Caper", a group of gold thieves put themselves to sleep for 100 years to escape the cops, only to start backstabbing and killing each other off once they awaken, just so they can hoard the gold for themselves. And then it turns out in the future, gold is worthless. Fittingly, the last of them dies begging a nearby driver for water in exchange for a bar of gold, much to the drivers confusion.
* MechanisticAlienCulture: Many episodes of the classic sci-fi anthology featured aliens with ambiguously robotic characteristics. "Mr. Dingle, the Strong," for example, featured one with [[BizarreAlienBiology two heads]].
* MentalTimeTravel: "Static" ends this way for a bitter, regretful old man, giving him a second chance.
* TheMerch: Includes soundtrack albums, action figures, and a pinball game that [[Pinball/TheTwilightZone has its own entry]].
* AMindIsATerribleThingToRead: "A Penny for Your Thoughts" has the hero discovering how petty and self-centered the people around him can be when he becomes inexplicably psychic. It's not as bad as some cases [[spoiler:(and it helps him get the girl)]], but he's still relieved when his newfound power vanishes.
* MirrorUniverse: "Mirror Image".
* MobileKiosk: "One for the Angels". Lew Bookman has a mobile pitch: a suitcase with extendable legs. When he finishes a pitch, he collapses the legs back into the suitcase and moves on.
* MotorMouth: [=McNulty=], the main character of the episode "A Kind of Stop Watch.”
* TheMultiverse: The main character of "The Parallel" discovers that he has accidentally stumbled into a [[AlternateDimension parallel world]] with a [[AlternateHistory similar chronology]] to his own.
* MundaneWish: Appears in "The Man in the Bottle". The couples' first wish (out of four) is to have a pane of glass in their shop repaired, in order to [[GodTest test the genie's power]] first. The couple then proceed to waste their remaining wishes, but in the end console themselves with the thought that at least the glass got repaired. Guess what happens next.
* MurderBallad: Used as a PlotDevice in "Come Wander with Me".
* MurderousMannequin: Subverted in "The After Hours"; Marsha is, at first, understandably terrified when the mannequins come to life, but it soon becomes apparent that they are friendly, and only want [[spoiler: [[TomatoInTheMirror her to remember that she is also a mannequin]]]].
* MyCarHatesMe: "You Drive", "The Hitch-Hiker".
* MyGrandsonMyself: In "Queen of the Nile", Pamela lives with the elderly Mrs. Draper, ostensibly her mother. She is actually [[spoiler: Pamela's daughter and Pamela is hundreds of years old, heavily implied to have been Cleopatra.]]
* NaziProtagonist: The episode "Death's Head Revisited" centered around a former concentration camp officer at Dachau who revisits the camp to relive his memories of the many atrocities he committed during the war. He eventually receives [[LaserGuidedKarma karmic justice]] from the souls of his victims.
* NeverSleepAgain: "Perchance to Dream", "Ninety Years Without Slumbering"
* TheNightThatNeverEnds: "I Am the Night--Color Me Black".
* NoAntagonist: "The Parallel".
* NoChallengeEqualsNoSatisfaction: In the episode "A Nice Place to Visit", an inveterate criminal dies and goes to the afterlife: a pleasant place where he gets everything he wants and all his gambles always pay off. He becomes dissatisfied and asks to be sent to [[{{Hell}} The Other Place]], saying he doesn't belong in Heaven. The reply he gets: [[spoiler:"[[ThisIsntHeaven Whatever gave you the idea you were in Heaven]], Mr. Valentine? [[WhamLine This]] ''[[WhamLine is]]'' [[WhamLine the other place!]]"]]
* NoDialogueEpisode: "The Invaders." Throughout the episode, the main character makes plenty of noises as she fends off tiny aliens, but none of it is dialogue. Aside from Serling's narrations, the only spoken dialogue comes when the last and soon-to-be-killed invader sends a distress call back home. [[spoiler:The tiny invaders are then revealed to be humans from Earth. This revelation subsequently justifies the trope, as the woman is a (giant) alien and wouldn't know English or any other language from Earth.]]
* NoEnding[=/=]UncertainDoom: We never learn what happens at the end of "The Odyssey of Flight 33".
* NoTimeToExplain: "Passage on the ''Lady Anne''". [[spoiler:As it turns out, it's a ship only meant for dying/wanting to die people.]]
* NostalgiaAintLikeItUsedToBe: "The Incredible World of Horace Ford"
* NostalgiaFilter: Happens in "Of Late I Think of Cliffordville". CorruptCorporateExecutive Feathersmith makes a DealWithTheDevil to go back in time and relive his life, in order to enjoy once again the climb from a nobody to a tyrannical titan of industry. However, things in his youth weren't exactly as nice as he remembered. For example, he forgets that vaccines weren't invented at that time, the streets are still unpaved, and the girl he reminisced about was nowhere near as attractive or charming as he remembered. This is on top of all the ''other'' mistakes he makes...
* NotSoDifferent: Between the Central American dictator and Ramos Clemente in "The Mirror".
* NotSoImaginaryFriend: "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet", "Mirror Image".
* OneCharacterMultipleLives: In the episode, "A World of Difference", Arthur Curtis finds himself switching between two worlds - one where he's a normal businessman, and another where he's an alcoholic actor named Gerry Raigan who's playing the role of businessman Arthur Curtis in a movie.
* OneWordTitle: "Elegy", "Execution", "Dust", "Static", "Two", "Mute", "Miniature" and "Steel".
* OnOneCondition:
** In "The Masks", Jason Foster tells his daughter and her family that unless they wear the Mardi Gras masks he has made for them until midnight, their inheritance when he dies will consist solely of train fare back to their home in Boston.
** In "Uncle Simon", Barbara Polk is told she has inherited her misanthropic uncle's entire estate, as long as she sells none of it and looks after his last invention: a robot which [[spoiler:gradually takes on his personality, and eventually speaks in his voice.]]
* OnTheNext: Each episode ends with Rod Serling telling the audience about the next episode. For season four, clips from the episodes were also shown.
* OntologicalInertia: "The 7th Is Made Up of Phantoms".
* OntologicalMystery: "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E1WhereIsEverybody Where Is Everybody?]]", "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E79FiveCharactersInSearchOfAnExit Five Characters in Search of an Exit]]", "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E150StopoverInAQuietTown Stopover in a Quiet Town]]".
* OpenDoorOpening: During the fourth and fifth seasons.
* OutOfTheFryingPan: In the revived series episode "Crazy as a Soup Sandwich". A loser sells his soul to a demon in exchange for winning at the horse races, only to get cheated. He goes to the mobster he borrowed his betting money from, begging for protection [[spoiler:and the mobster does--because he's an arch-demon in human form, and now the loser owes his soul to a ''worse'' demon]].
* PantheraAwesome: "[[spoiler:The Jungle]]".
* PeggySue: "Of Late I Think of Cliffordville".
* PersecutedIntellectuals:
** In "Time Enough at Last", everyone looks down on and picks on Henry Bemis (Burgess Meredith) for being a reader.
** In "The Obsolete Man", Romney Wordsworth, the librarian (also played by Burgess Meredith) is considered obsolete, as books have been banned.
* PhoneCallFromTheDead:
** In "Night Call" an invalid starts receiving mysterious phone calls. The calls are eventually traced to a cemetery, where a fallen phone line is in contact with the grave of her deceased husband.
** "Long Distance Call" has a grandmother calling from beyond the grave and urging her beloved grandchild toward acts of suicide so they can be together again.
* PilotMovie: In 1958, Rod Serling wrote a teleplay ("The Time Element") which he hoped to turn into a weekly anthology series. It's often included in the series' canon as its lost pilot episode.
* PleaseDontLeaveMe: A rare non-dying example occurs at the end of "A Piano in the House." The titular instrument reveals that {{Jerkass}} Fitzgerald Fortune's cruelty is simply a mask for his true persona: a misanthropic, frightened child terrified of the world and unable to react to others with anything but disgust and hatred. This revelation comes during a party, and all of the guests (including Fortune's wife) leave after Fortune's breakdown; he screams like a toddler, declaring that he doesn't want them to go and threatening to be "very naughty" if they do.
* PoorlyDisguisedPilot
* PowZapWhamCam: Used in episodes such as "Third From The Sun" and "The Howling Man".
* PragmaticAdaptation: Episodes adapted from short stories were often massaged a bit. In Creator/DamonKnight's short story "To Serve Man" the alien representatives are described as looking like pigs. The producers thought the audience would find this too silly, so the alien makeup is the more conventional [[MyBrainIsBig tall-head]] variety.
* PrettyInMink: Some furs are worn in some episodes, such as "Twenty-Two", and especially in "A Nice Place to Visit" to show the supposed grand nature of the place.
* PropheticFallacy
* RaisedByRobots: "I Sing the Body Electric", "The Lateness of the Hour".
* RealityWarper: Anthony Fremont in "It's a Good Life", and Gregory West in "A World of His Own", though the latter needs a dictation machine.
* TheReasonYouSuckSpeech:
** The unpleasant family in "The Masks" receive one from Jason Foster, just before he finally dies.
** Fitzgerald Fortune is on the receiving end of several of these in "A Piano in the House," but he shrugs them off, largely because he's using a magical player piano to force people to reveal their hidden secrets. At the end of the episode, though, one of the piano's songs prompts Fortune to give a Reason You Suck Speech to ''himself''.
** Feathersmith gets one too in "Of Late I Think of Cliffordville".
* ReplacedTheThemeTune: See InstrumentalThemeTune above.
* ReplacementScrappy: In-Universe example with "I Sing The Body Electric." A widowed husband gets a robot granny to help raise his children, but the oldest child rejects her for not being her deceased mother.
* RetGone: "And When the Sky Was Opened".
* RidiculouslyHumanRobots: "The Lateness of the Hour", "The Lonely".
* RoomFullOfCrazy: Rod Serling said that when he first called for scripts, ""I got 15,000 manuscripts in the first five days. Of those 15,000, I and members of my staff read about 140. And 137 of those 140 were wasted paper; hand-scrawled, laboriously written, therapeutic unholy grotesqueries from sick, troubled, deeply disturbed people." The other three were well-written, but unsuitable for the show.
* RuleOfThree: In "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up", said Martian has three arms. [[spoiler: The Venusian has three eyes.]]
* SameLanguageDub: In "The Bewitchin' Pool", it happened to Mary Badham of ''Film/ToKillAMockingbird'' fame, whose lines and voice in the outdoor scenes were so unintelligible, the directors had to have Creator/JuneForay dub her lines.
* {{Satan}}: Popular character. Played by Julie Newmar (in "Of Late I Think of Cliffordville") and Burgess Meredith (in "Printer's Devil") among others.
* ScrewPolitenessImASenior: Jason Foster in "The Masks", though this is both a subversion and a JustifiedTrope. Jason's cranky and crotchety because he knows he's going to die soon and he's surrounded by {{Jerkass}} family members waiting for him to die like vultures. However, while certainly cranky, he never comes off as needlessly cruel to his doctor or his servants and shares a sort-of rapport with them. They're also quite understanding of why he's cranky, and share his contempt for his so-called "family".
* SealedEvilInACan: "The Howling Man."
-->'''Rod Serling''': Ancient folk saying - you can catch the Devil, but you can't hold him long.
* SecondPlaceIsForWinners: Invoked in the ending of "A Game of Pool", alongside BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor. Yeah, Jesse Cardiff defeated the legendary Fats Brown and is the best pool player ever. What prize does he get? [[spoiler: [[AndIMustScream Spending eternity defending his pool title until he loses.]]]]
* SelfFulfillingProphecy: "A Most Unusual Camera," "No Time Like the Past," and "What's in the Box."
* ShapeShifterSwanSong: "The Four of Us Are Dying."
* ShootTheShaggyDog:
** [[spoiler:"The Time Element." Especially heartbreaking because the main character not only is unable to prevent the death of a young couple (oh, and prevent the mass death and disaster at Pearl Harbor), he also gets ''himself'' killed and part of his life erased from existence as well.]] This episode not only shot the shaggy dog, it skinned and made it into a floor rug.
** Nonlethal version in [[spoiler:"The Big Tall Wish"]].
** "It's a Good Life". No, it isn't!
* SilenceIsGolden: "The Invaders", written by Creator/RichardMatheson, has no dialogue until the very end (when what little dialogue the episode has constitutes TheReveal).
* SleptThroughTheApocalypse: "Time Enough at Last," subverted in "One More Pallbearer".
* SlidingScaleOfBeauty:
** The show [[PlayingWithATrope plays with this]] in the famous episode "Eye of the Beholder", where a woman undergoes plastic surgery to become beautiful because she falls into the Most Horrible Ever category (there's a village made just for ugly people so nobody would be forced to look at them). Of course being ''The Twilight Zone'' there's a twist: [[spoiler:it's reversed. Being ugly is beautiful and vice versa.]]
** Also played with in "Number Twelve Looks Just Like You", in which a young Common Beauty is described by others as "hideous" because she hasn't traded her original appearance in for a carbon-copy World Class Beauty body.
* SlidingScaleOfContinuity: Level 0 (Non-Linear Installments).
* SocietyOnEdgeEpisode: "The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street" concerns neighbors on a street who become paranoid when the power goes out and odd things start happening, putting the blame on aliens and then turning on one another due to suspicion.
* SociopathicSoldier: Lieutenant Katell in "A Quality of Mercy" wants to be one, wanting to prove himself and completely destroy the enemy (in this case, the Japanese during UsefulNotes/WorldWarII). The KarmicTwistEnding forces him to the other side, where a gung-ho Japanese soldier does the same thing he was about to do to some wounded Americans hiding in the very same cave. He doesn't like it.
* SomethingCompletelyDifferent:
** "Cavender Is Coming", a PoorlyDisguisedPilot for a prospective comedy series starring Jesse White as the title character, an apprentice [[GuardianEntity guardian angel]] who assists a klutzy mortal played by Carol Burnett.
** Also, the comedy episodes, such as 'Mr. Bevis', 'A Penny For Your Thoughts' and 'Once Upon A Time'.
** For the episode "An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge" Rod Serling ditches his usual method of introduction and says, apparently out of character, that tonight they're going to do something very special that they've never yet done in the five years they've been running the show and show you a French film made by somebody else. Justified, in that it's up to the show's usual quality.
** For Season 2, six episodes were [[VideoInsideFilmOutside recorded on videotape]] using four video cameras on a studio soundstage at CBS Television City, as a cost-cutting measure mandated by CBS programming head James T. Aubrey. However, videotape was a relatively primitive medium in the early 1960s, thus the editing of tape was next to impossible. Even worse, the requisite multicamera setup of the videotape experiment made location shooting difficult, severely limiting the potential scope of the storylines, so the crew had to abandon the videotaping project. The six "videotape episodes" are: "The Lateness of the Hour", "[[ChristmasEpisode The Night of the Meek]]", "The Whole Truth", "Twenty-Two", "Static", and "Long-Distance Call".
** The entire fourth season which CBS expanded into an hour, creating scripts that were for the most part overly padded, and signaled to many the ''Zone'' Jump the Shark moment.
* SpaceMadness: Discussed in [[spoiler: "Where Is Everybody?" The town the protagonist is in is just a hallucination. He's really in an isolation chamber, and he's part of an experiment the government is running to see how humans would handle a solo mission to the Moon. He does make it through the experiment though and seems optimistic about mankind's chances of actually reaching the Moon despite his mental breakdown.]]
* SpaceWhaleAesop: "Stopover In a Quiet Town": Don't drink and drive, [[spoiler:or you'll wake up in a toy town owned by a gigantic extraterrestrial little girl after having been abducted.]]
* SpeculativeFiction: The SciFi elements and stories.
* SpookySilentLibrary: "Time Enough at Last" ends with a lone man, an empty library, and a broken pair of glasses. Possibly [[WeirdAlEffect better known by now through parodies than through the original.]]
* StableTimeLoop: "The Last Flight" and "A Hundred Yards over the Rim".
* StockFootage:
** The countdown and launch footage from "I Shot an Arrow into the Air" was reused in "People Are Alike All Over".
** Footage of the ''C-57-D'' from ''Film/ForbiddenPlanet'' appears in some episodes. At the end of "The Monsters are Due on Maple Street" the footage is disguised by being shown upside down and backwards - this was achieved by simply turning the clip upside down before splicing it in. In "To Serve Man", however, although the full-size ''C-57-D'' landing ramp is used, the Kanamit spaceship's takeoff is represented by one of the eponymous ''Film/EarthVsTheFlyingSaucers'', animated by RayHarryhausen.
** ''The Little People'' uses footage from a Mercury Program launch.
* StoppedClock: "Where is Everybody?"
* {{Subtext}}: "The Fugitive" might also seem creepy to modern eyes. Especially when it's revealed that the elderly man eventually marries the little girl. [[spoiler:Of course, he's a shapeshifting alien who's actually handsome and can take on a younger form and he waited until she got older before marrying her, but it still [[WifeHusbandry sounds a bit squicky.]]]]
* SufficientlyAdvancedAlien
* SurvivorGuilt:
** Suffered by James Embry in "King Nine Will Not Return".
** Happens again in "The Thirty-Fathom Grave".
* TakeThat:
** The entirety of "Showdown with Rance [=McGrew=]" against [[TheWestern the TV westerns]] of the time. It also serves as a deconstruction of sorts. Serling hated the Westerns of the time, deeming them too unrealistic and predictable, and later went on to make a [=Western=] series (''The Loner'') himself.
** The hour long episode "The Bard" features a hack writer who, while reseaching a book of black magic, inadvertently brings Creator/WilliamShakespeare back from the dead, and uses him as a literal ghost writer. Serling uses this setup to parody everything about television at the time including sponsors making inane changes, and the concept of taking a half hour show and making an hour show of it, such as CBS did to ''Zone'' that season, much to Serling's dismay.
* TalkingToThemself: "Nervous Man in a Four Dollar Room".
* TallTale: "Hocus-Pocus and Frisby" features a man who continually tells tall tales. During the episode he's [[AlienAbduction abducted by aliens]] (ironically, because they ''believe'' all his stories) and escapes, but when he tells his friends, they believe he is just CryingWolf. (Of course, the whole episode could be a tall tale... from Rod Serling's point of view.)
* TaxmanTakesTheWinnings: In "The Man in the Bottle", the Castles' second wish is for a million dollars in cash. After they give away some of the money, an IRS agent shows up and gives them a bill for the taxes (Federal and state) they owe on it. This leaves them with only five dollars.
* ThisIsntHeaven: "A Nice Place to Visit."
* ThroughTheEyesOfMadness: A number of episodes leave open the question of how much of what the audience sees is real. Most overtly explored in the episode "The Arrival", which ends with Rod Serling outright asking the audience to decide whether we've been watching the main character's mental breakdown or his encounter with the supernatural, and "The Mirror" is much the same.
* TimeStandsStill: "Still Valley" and "A Kind of a Stopwatch."
* TimeTravel: "Walking Distance," "The Last Flight," "Execution," "Back There," "The Odyssey of Flight 33," "A Hundred Yards over the Rim," "Once Upon a Time," "No Time Like the Past," "Of Late I Think of Cliffordville," "The Incredible World of Horace Ford," "The 7th Is Made Up of Phantoms," "The Time Element."
* TitleDrop: With the exception of "Jess-Belle," which skipped the closing narration, every episode opens and closes with a narration from Rod Serling. In many of the opening narrations, and in almost every closing one, the narration ends with "The Twilight Zone." After setting the premise for the episode, the opening narration often states the character(s) is/are about to enter The Twilight Zone. The closing ones summarizes the events of the episode in an eerie and cryptic manner, and a moral or message about what happened is either hinted at or outright stated; but it always ends in the phrase "The Twilight Zone." The exceptions are "The Four of Us Are Dying," "He's Alive," "Long Live Walter Jameson," "Deaths-Head Revisited" and "On Thursday We Leave For Home."
** In the original broadcast of "Night of the Meek" Serling expresses a holiday greeting after the "...in the Twilight Zone" statement, which was generally edited out in syndication.
** Almost every episode will feature a character saying the episode title. If they don't you can expect the narrator to chime in.
* TitleSequenceReplacement: The first season opening is often pasted over by the second season opening in syndicated reruns.
* TomatoInTheMirror: [[spoiler:"The After Hours," "The Lateness of the Hour," "In His Image," "Ring-a-ding Girl"]]. Ironically, played with in "The Mirror".
* TomatoSurprise: Too many to list.
* ToServeMan: [[spoiler:{{Trope Namer|s}}]]
* ShoutOut/ToShakespeare:
** Three of the episode titles are "[[Theatre/{{Hamlet}} Perchance to Dream]]," "[[Theatre/RichardIII The Purple Testament]]" and "[[Theatre/TheMerchantOfVenice A Quality of Mercy]]"; Rod Serling even quotes Portia's words to Shylock at the end of the latter episode ("The quality of mercy is not strained, / It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven / Upon the place beneath: it is thrice blessed, / It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes"; ''The Merchant of Venice'', IV.i).
** A running joke in "The Bard" (in which a hack would be tv writer brings Shakespeare to life and puts him to work writing for television) has Shakespeare quoting his plays, title and verse. At one point the Bard says, "To be or not to be - that is...." looks confused, and then exits.
* TouchedByVorlons: Luther Dingle from "Mr. Dingle the Strong". [[spoiler:Twice.]]
* TownWithADarkSecret: "Valley of the Shadow."
* TragicHero: Captain Benteen in "On Thursday We Leave For Home."
* {{Troll}}: Oliver Crangle in "Four O'Clock". Did he shrink because what he was trying to do went wrong, was the whole thing a hallucination...or did every single evil person on Earth actually shrink, including him because he was evil?! The last possibility would have had very interesting results (some reminiscent of Steve Martin on "getting small").
* TrumanShowPlot: "A World of Difference".
* TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture: Some episodes could get pretty bad about this.
** Pity that by the 1990's we hadn't even traveled to the nearest galaxy yet. [[SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale And we never will.]]
** The episode "The Elegy" lays out a distinct timeline; a trio of spacemen from 2185 discover a cemetery on a distant asteroid consisting of a replica of daily life on Earth that was supposedly started in 1973, and mention a nuclear war having happened in the 1980's.
* TwistEnding: Became infamous for this sort of thing.
* UnbuiltTrope: The episode "Five Characters in Search of an Exit" milked the concept of [[spoiler: sentient toys]] for all its inherent horror and existential angst about three decades before [[spoiler: ''WesternAnimation/ToyStory'']] made the idea famous. The ending, where we find out that [[spoiler: the titular five characters are actually dolls dumped in a Salvation Army bin by their owner,]] is absolutely ''terrifying''.
* UnPaused: "A Kind of a Stopwatch", until [[spoiler:[[KarmicTwistEnding the stopwatch breaks.]]]]
* UrbanFantasy: Anything that takes place in a city, natch.
* UrbanLegends: The basis of many episodes.
* VampiricDraining: "Queen of the Nile". A middle-aged actress named Pamela Morris is actually [[spoiler:thousands of years old - she maintains her youth by draining the LifeEnergy of young men]].
* VideoInsideFilmOutside: The six Season 2 "videotape episodes"; see SomethingCompletelyDifferent.
* VillainousBreakdown: Happens many times.
* WaitHere: In the episode "Still Valley" a Confederate scout gives orders to his partner.
-->'''Paradine:''' Now you stay here. If you hear a shot, you get back to the lieutenant at a fast gallop...If you haven't heard from me in 15 minutes, you get back there anyway.
* WarIsHell - "Two".
* WastelandElder: "On Thursday We Leave For Home". [[spoiler: Subverted.]]
* WaterSourceTampering: In "Black Leather Jackets", a group of aliens is sent to Earth to KillAllHumans by contaminating city water reservoirs with deadly bacteria.
* WeComeInPeaceShootToKill: Type 1: "The Gift", Type 2: "To Serve Man"
* WellIntentionedExtremist:
** According to Billy Mumy (who played him), Anthony from "It's A Good Life" is honestly trying to make the world a better place, he simply doesn't grasp that what makes ''him'' happy isn't best for everyone. In short, his immaturity prevents him from taking other's views into consideration. This is explored further in the short story on which the episode is based. A notable example excluded from the episode is his reanimating a man's corpse after hearing his widow mourn his death, much to her (and everybody else's) horror. The town folk mostly try to avoid any negative thoughts at all after that, because Anthony might make things so much worse by trying to make them better.
** Jagger from "I Am the Night-Color me Black".
* WhackAMole: "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street" and "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?"
* WhatDidIDoLastNight: "Stopover in a Quiet Town".
* WhatMeasureIsANonHuman: Brutally answered in "The Lonely."
* WhereAreTheyNowEpilogue: [[spoiler:"I Sing the Body Electric."]]
* WifeHusbandry: "[[spoiler:The Fugitive]]".
* TheWildWest: "Mr. Denton on Doomsday," "Execution," "Dust," "A Hundred Yards over the Rim," "The Grave," "Showdown with Rance [=McGrew=]," "The 7th Is Made Up of Phantoms," "Mr. Garrity and the Graves."
* WhoWantsToLiveForever: "Long Live Walter Jameson", "Escape Clause".
* UsefulNotes/WorldWarII: "Judgment Night," "The Purple Testament," "King Nine Will Not Return," "Death's-Head Revisited," "A Quality of Mercy," "The Thirty-Fathom Grave," "The Time Element." Also, Rod Serling served in the war in RealLife.
* WorldOfSymbolism: Some of the more esoteric [[TheReveal reveals]] involve this.
* WorthlessYellowRocks: "[[spoiler:The Rip Van Winkle Caper]]".
* WouldHitAGirl: The Man in "Two" gets into a fistfight with an enemy soldier, who is a woman, and knocks her out.
* WriterOnBoard: Serling was an outspoken liberal, even for his day, and many of the show's recurring themes of corporate oppression, racism, censorship, isolationism, and the horrors of war were not simply ideas he liked to discuss, but the very reason he created the series was to use as a sounding board for such taboos.
* YouAllMeetInACell: 'The premise of the episode called "Five Characters in Search of an Exit": An Army major wakes up to find himself trapped inside in a large metal cylinder, along with a hobo, a ballet dancer, a bagpiper, and a clown. None of them have any memory of who they are or how they got there.
* YouCantFightFate: Or at least, you can't change the past. Several episodes revolve around characters trying to avert disasters, but failing or only making small changes.
* YouHaveToBelieveMe: A common occurrence in the series, but especially in "Hocus-Pocus and Frisby".
* YouLookFamiliar
* YouWakeUpInARoom: "Stopover in a Quiet Town".
* YourMindMakesItReal: [[spoiler: "Perchance to Dream".]]
* {{Zeerust}}: A lot of outer space-themed episodes take place in the year 2000 or the late 90's.
** "Steel", in which human fighters have been replaced by boxing robots, takes place in the far off year of 1974.
** "Third from the Sun" showcased a sleek white phone that gave off soft, elevator-like tones when it rang. In fact, the rotary dial was on the bottom!
** "Elegy" starts with the landing of a rocket that in many ways works like how we imagine a UFO. They open the hatch, and down comes a ladder on a hinge.

!!''The Twilight Zone'' '80s revival, and 2002-03 revival provide examples of:
* AdultFear: The 2002 episode "How Much Do You Love Your Kid?" Your child may be kidnapped, and the police won't do a thing about it, because it's for a [[FridgeLogic perfectly legal]] TV show. And there's the implied threat that if you can't find your child in an hour, you'll never see them again. [[spoiler:And ''your own husband'' was the kidnapper, and thinks that doing it all was a ''favor''.]]
* AuthorAvatar: The lead character of "One Life, Furnished in Early Poverty" was directly based on Creator/HarlanEllison, who wrote the original story - to such an extent that (according to his audio commentary on the DVD) he actually wept while watching the filming of one scene.
* BalancingDeathsBooks: "Welcome to Winfield".
* BaseballEpisode: "Extra Innings" .
* BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor: "The Leprechaun-Artist," "The Library", "Cold Reading".
* TheBlank: "A Matter of Minutes".
* BlindAndTheBeast: In "To See the Invisible Man", the only person to be kind to Mitchell during his punishment is a blind man who cannot see the implant telling others to ignore him.
* BrownNote: "Need to Know".
* BystanderSyndrome: In several stories, warning of the dangers of not taking a more active role or interest in world affairs. One perfect example is "A Little Peace and Quiet", where a harried housewife also refuses to take note of the fact that the Soviet Union and United States are on the brink of war, and that she – thanks to an amulet that can get people to "Shut up!" and "Start talking!" – might just be wearing the thing that can bring world peace. Instead, she uses the amulet selfishly (when her family gets to her or wants to deal with annoying visitors) ... and the United States pays a dear price in the end, thanks to her disinterest in world affairs and her not realizing that she held a gift of world peace – leaving her to finally stop time just an instant before a nuclear bomb detonates and wipes out much of central and southern California.
* CastFullOfGay: [[spoiler:"Dead Run".]]
* ColorMeBlack: Done in an episode of the 2003 reboot.
* CreditCardPlot: The 1980's episode "The Card." Also an example of an CruelTwistEnding.
* DarkIsNotEvil: "Rendezvous in a Dark Place" (1985 revival), "One Night At Mercy" (2003 revival). Death in the latter is a kindly fellow who doesn't like his job at all and is happy to quit. [[spoiler:When the doctor eventually dies of an aneurysm, Death comforts him, admits that he's tempted to just let the doctor come back to life, and shows admiration for the doctor's ability to give life to the patients.]]
** "The Chosen" (2003 episode). An unpleasant asshole is followed around by two intimidating people in dark leather trenchcoats telling him he's been "chosen." Eventually the asshole's friends get in on the act and say the same thing. It turns out in the end that the two pursuers [[spoiler: were angels rescuing mankind from an impending nuclear war, and the asshole is subsequently left to die in atomic fire.]]
* DeadAllAlong: [[spoiler:"Kentucky Rye"]] [1980s Revival].
* DeadToBeginWith: "Take My Life...Please!" [1980s Revival].
* DeathIsTheOnlyOption: In the 2002 episode "To Protect and Serve", a cop kills an abusive pimp to protect a woman, but the pimp comes back as a ghost and continues his evil ways. The cop eventually kills himself, becoming a ghost and allowing him to defeat the pimp once and for all.
* DealWithTheDevil: "Dealer's Choice," "I of Newton," "Time and Teresa Golowitz," "Crazy As a Soup Sandwich" [1980s Revival].
* DivineIntervention: "The Executions of Grady Finch" [2003 Revival].
* DontFearTheReaper: "Rendezvous in a Dark Place."
* DreamApocalypse: The remake of "Shadow Play" [1980s Revival].
* {{Doppelganger}}: "Shatterday," "The Once and Future King," "The World Next Door," "The Road Less Traveled," "Something in the Walls" [1980s Revival].
* {{Dystopia}}: [[spoiler:"Examination Day"]], "To See the Invisible Man" [1980s Revival].
* EarnYourHappyEnding: "Gabe's Story" (2003 revival). The titular character has been having a severe run of bad luck lately. As his life is about to crumble apart for good, he learns that he and everyone else are having their "stories" written for them, as - supposedly - nothing would ever happen to them otherwise. Gabe convinces his Writer and her boss allowing him to take control of his own life - allowing him to reconcile with his wife and get a fresh start.
* EvilOldFolks: "Gramma," written by Creator/HarlanEllison and based on a Creator/StephenKing story inspired by Creator/HPLovecraft.
* FantasticTimeManagement: In the 1980s episode "A Little Peace and Quiet", a harried housewife finds a magic sundial that allows her to stop and restart time. She uses it to literally make time for herself, enjoying a peaceful breakfast or leisurely shopping for groceries while time is stopped for everyone else. [[spoiler: Everything is perfect until nuclear war breaks out and she stops time while a missile is 10 feet above her head. She will have to choose between dying with everyone else and living her life forever trapped between two instants of time.]]
* GoMadFromTheRevelation: Occurs in the original series episode "Deaths-Head Revisited" and the 1980s revival episode "Need to Know".
* GrandTheftMe: The end of "[[spoiler:Gramma]]".
* TheGrimReaper: "Welcome to Winfield," "Rendezvous in a Dark Place" [1980s Revival].
* HairRaisingHare: in ''TheTwilightZone: TheMovie'', in the updated version of "It's a Good Life," the local RealityWarper asks his uncle to [[PullARabbitOutOfMyHat pull a rabbit out of a hat]] as a magic trick, then the rabbit turns into a hairless, hulking, snarling monstrosity before it goes back into the hat.
* HauntedTechnology: "Her Pilgrim Soul" [1980s Revival].
* HenpeckedHusband: "Button, Button" [1980s Revival].
* HereWeGoAgain: "A Day in Beaumont," "The Curious Case of Edgar Witherspoon," "The Hellgrammite Method" [1980s Revival}].
* TheHiddenHour: "A Matter of Minutes" and "Paladin of the Lost Hour" (both from the 1980s revival)
* HistoricalDomainCharacter:
** Music/ElvisPresley is used as a character in "The Once and Future King" [1980s Revival].
** UsefulNotes/JohnFKennedy and Nikita Krushchev play important roles in "Profiles in Silver" [1980s revival].
* HitlersTimeTravelExemptionAct: "Cradle of Darkness" (2002 series): [[spoiler: Subverted in that the time traveler succeeds, only for the nanny to replace baby Adolf with a baby from a beggar woman on the street.]]
* HumanAliens: "Small Talent for War" [1980s Revival].
* HumanPopsicle: "Quarantine" [1980s Revival].
* IChooseToStay: "Found And Lost" [2002-03 Revival].
* InvisibleJerkass: In "To See the Invisible Man", Mitchell Chaplin is punished by being given an implant that means others have to ignore him and act as if he was not there. He initally does things like walking into a women's change room.
* {{Irony}}: "To See The Invisible Man". The main character is sentenced to a year of invisibility(where others are to shun him or face being shunned themselves) for the crime of 'coldness', yet he and others are forced to be 'cold' towards the 'invisibles'.
* ItsAllAboutMe: In "To See The Invisible Man", a character is sentenced to one year of invisibility. He manages to chat with a blind man for awhile, before the man is told that the stranger talking to him is 'invisible' and he shouldn't be talking to him or even acknowledging his presence. When alerted to this, the blind man mutters something in the vein of "Damn you!"
* JungleJapes: "Cold Reading" features these coming to life inside a radio broadcast studio, including a native [[JungleDrums beating on a drum]] [1980s Revival].
* LighterAndSofter: "The Star", an adaptation of the short story of the same title. The ending in the original had a priest in despair after finding out how an advanced and peaceful civilization perished, but the adaptation reverses the originally nihilist ending when the astrophysicist with him shows him a poem that this civilization should not be grieved for, as they were peaceful and joyful, but to grieve for those still in the dark.
* LighthousePoint: "The Beacon" [1980s Revival]. Another episode concerned a lighthouse that was sort of a waypoint on the afterlife, where the newly dead arrived before being sent on their way.
* TheLittleShopThatWasntThereYesterday: "Wong's Lost and Found Emporium" [1980s Revival].
* LivingDollCollector: An episode of the 2002 reboot featured a little girl who turned all her babysitters into Barbie dolls because she was lonely and didn't want them to ever leave.
** The end of "Azoth the Avenger is a Friend of Mine," another 2002 episode, sees Craig transforming his abusive father into an action figure with a magic spell.
* LivingShadow: "The Shadow Man" [1980s Revival].
* LonelyDollGirl: Danielle in "The Collection", to the point of being a LivingDollCollector.
* MessageInABottle: "A Saucer of Loneliness" [1980s Revival].
* MirrorUniverse: "The World Next Door,” "The Road Less Traveled" [1980s Revival].
* MurderousMannequin: The remake of the "The After Hours" [1980s Revival].
* MyGreatestFailure: In "Azoth the Avenger is a Friend of Mine," the title character reveals that in his youth, he fled a demonic attack that killed his whole family. His shame over his action continues to motivate him.
* NotAfraidOfYouAnymore: Craig says this word for word to his father in "Azoth the Avenger is a Friend of Mine." His mother doesn't quote the trope name, her standing up to her husband to defend Craig implies this.
* NotSoImaginaryFriend: "What Are Friends For?" [1980s Revival].
* OntologicalMystery: "Matter of Minutes" [1980s Revival].
* OpeningShoutOut: Both revivals feature images of Creator/RodSerling in the opening credits.
* PartingWordsRegret: In "One Life, Furnished in Early Poverty", a man visits his old hometown and finds himself in the past. During that time, he meets his father. Not telling who he is, he tells him how his father is always angry but never got the chance to tell him that he loved him.
* PassingTheTorch: [[spoiler:"Paladin of the Lost Hour"]] [1980s Revival].
* PersecutedIntellectuals: In the '80s revival episode "Examination Day", the government exterminates anyone who scores too high on a mandatory examination at a young age.
* PluckyOfficeGirl: Karen Billings, played by Pam Dawber in the ''New Twilight Zone'' episode "But Can She Type".
* [[PoweredByAForsakenChild Powered by a Rebellious Child]]: The Ever-Green community, where they turn some teens into [[spoiler: ''red'' plant fertilizer]] disguised as a 'reeducation camp' especially for them.
* RaceLift: The 2003 revival was targeted towards a more African-American audience; the host was black as were a lot of the main characters in its episodes, and it featured episodes such as a racist white man waking up black. TropesAreNotBad, of course, and being on {{UPN}} might have had something to do with it.
* RecycledSoundtrack: If you think the soundtrack from the 2002 series sounds oddly familiar, it's because the series' composer was Mark Snow and he reused some of his music from ''Series/TheXFiles''.
* TheRemake: Many episodes from the original series were later remade, including "Kick the Can," "It's a Good Life," and "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" [The Movie], and "A Kind of Stopwatch" (as "A Little Peace and Quiet" and with elements of "Time Enough at Last" thrown in), "Dead Man's Shoes" ("Dead Women's Shoes"), "Night of the Meek," "Shadow Play," "The After Hours," "Miniature" (as "The Call"), "Penny for Your Thoughts" (as "Vision"), and "A Game of Pool" [1980s Revival] - in this case using George Clayton Johnson's original script [[spoiler: and its original ending, where the challenger loses]] without informing him, which [[BerserkButton Johnson did]] ''[[BerserkButton not]]'' [[BerserkButton appreciate]] - and "Eye of the Beholder" [2003 Revival]. Also, "One Life, Furnished in Early Poverty" [1980s Revival] has obvious similarities to "Walking Distance" from the original.
* ReroutedFromHeaven: In the episode "Dead Run", a truck driver takes a job delivering dead souls to {{Hell}}. However, the people he's delivering there seem way too nice to deserve damnation. It turns out the new CelestialBureaucracy that has taken over is using an overly-literal fundamentalist interpretation of Literature/TheBible, mainly due to them being paper-pushing {{Obstructive Bureaucrat}}s, rather than actual malevolence.
* {{Revival}}: There have been four ''Twilight Zone'' revivals in total: The two latter-day TV versions noted above, the film also mentioned above, and a {{radio}} version that's still in production.
* StableTimeLoop: "One Life, Furnished in Early Poverty," "The Once and Future King," "The Convict's Piano" [1980s Revival].
* {{Subtext}}: "Extra Innings" [1980s Revival] had a washed-up former baseball star who was good friends with a tween or teen girl. Nothing too creepy, yet. He and she trade cards a lot, and she gets him this 1910 card of a rookie who looked just like him and had exactly the same stats as him. Then, he discovers that the card allows him to take control of the rookie on the card, which also takes him back to 1910. Then, the next day, he tells the girl about it, and at first she doesn't believe him. When he shows her the stats, she believes him, as they have changed. Then, when he takes her back in time with him, before the card opens the portal, he puts his arm around her. Between her face there and the dialog, which sounds like it came from a VerySpecialEpisode about child molestation, the creepy subtext is amazing.
* SuperiorSuccessor: [[Literature/ItsAGoodLife Anthony Fremont's]] daughter in the 2002 revival manages to be a SuperiorSuccessor to a nigh-omnipotent RealityWarper. She can restore things that her father has willed out of existence (which he himself cannot do) and is immune to his telepathy.
* TalkingToThemself: "Shatterday" [1980s Revival].
* TanksForTheMemories: "The Mind of Simon Foster" [1980s Revival].
* TimeStandsStill: "A Little Peace and Quiet" [1980s Revival].
* TimeTravel: "One Life, Furnished in Early Poverty," "Profile in Silver," "The Once and Future King," "Lost and Found," "The Convict's Piano," "Joy Ride," "Time and Teresa Golowitz" [1980s Revival].
* TomatoInTheMirror: [[spoiler:"The After Hours," like the original]] [1980s Revival].
* TownWithADarkSecret: "The Beacon" [1980s Revival].
* TrumanShowPlot: "Special Service" [1980s Revival].
* UnPaused: Among others, "A Little Peace and Quiet" in the 1985 premiere. Penny, a typical 80's henpecked housewife, finds an amulet that allows her to stop and re-start time with the commands "Shut up!" and "Start talking!"); she abuses this privilege until the next night, when nuclear war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union breaks out.[[labelnote:*]]It's never explicitly stated, but it's at this point that Penny realizes the true purpose of her amulet: Freezing time to get the government officials together and forcing them to "start talking" about nuclear disarmament.[[/labelnote]] Penny is able to freeze time just seconds before [[NightmareFuel her hometown is destroyed by a nuclear bomb]].
* TheVietnamWar: The 80s revival episodes "Nightcrawlers" and "The Road Less Travelled."
* WeirdnessSearchAndRescue: In the short "A Matter of Minutes", the foreman of a group of people (played by Adolph Caesar) takes time to explain to a couple who ended up 'outside time' how time really worked, even showing them an animated computer graphic prepared for such an event.
* {{Wishplosion}}: "The Wish Bank", "I of Newton" [1980s Revival].
* WrongTurnAtAlbuquerque: "The Beacon".
* YouMonster: In ''It's Still A Good Life'', Anthony Fremont's own mother calls him a monster after all the years she had to suffer under her son's godlike powers.
* YouWillBeBeethoven: "Profile in Silver" and "The Once and Future King" [1980s Revival].
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Guess what? [[spoiler: Your whole life has been a dream, one of your family members is a robot, and that nice man that just moved into town is a Martian. Welcome to the Twilight Zone.]]
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