The novel
- During his interrogation, a Dallas police officer comes in to inform Epping that he has a phone call. His government interrogator snaps, "I don't care if it's the President of the United States. I'm interrogating a suspect.""Sir, it IS the President of the United States."
- A hilariously weird moment in which Epping is thinking about a particularly horrible crime that he wants to prevent, how to go about it, and what effects it might have on the time stream. We then get this passage:I shuffled back through the kitchen, pausing to look at the chair with the yellow plastic seat. "I hate you, chair," I told it, then went to bed again.
- Not much that Oswald does is played for laughs, but there is a moment when, while living on Mercedes St., that a local boy comes to their house selling Grit magazine. Oswald launches into a proselytizing speech about socialism while Marina attempts to defuse things. At the end the boy says that Oswald should have just told him that the latter was broke at the start. All Oswald can do is meekly explain that he was explaining why he was broke.
The TV series
- When Arliss Price asks Jake if he, too, is a military veteran, Jake (wanting to earn Arliss's trust) says that he fought in Korea.Arliss: What unit?
- When Ms. Mimi discovers Jake's real name, he made up a story about the FBI putting him in witness protection after testifying about a Mafia murder. The murder? Some mob guy named Michael had his brother Fredo killed on a fishing trip in Lake Tahoe.