History Literature / NeedfulThings

** It is not clear whether two "mistakes" with his pranks ([[spoiler: using Polly's current name on the fake xerox rather than the one the alleged senders would have known her by, and showing Annie Pangborn's car crash with her wearing the seatbelt]]) are gaps in his knowledge, laziness/haste/clumsiness on his part, or whether the single wrong detail (which gives the victim a chance to realise they're being tricked if they have the self-discipline to think things through) is something he puts in for his own amusement. It's also possible that, like many other stories involving a deal with supernatural entities, he ''has to'' give the victims that chance to see through his lies in order for the rest of the snare to work.

* TheResenter: Some thirty-forty years later, and Ace Merrill ''still'' hasn't gotten over Gordie [=LaChance=] and his friends getting the better of him in ''The Body'', to say nothing of the great success [=LaChance=] has found in his adulthood [[MostWritersAreWriters as a writer]]. When Gaunt asks him how he feels about the prospect of blowing Castle Rock to kingdom come, Ace doesn't think about the catastrophic loss of life or the millions of dollars in property damage of the act. No, he thinks about Gordie, and how his old nemesis "probably wipes his ass with ten dollar bills" now.

* BadBoss: While Ace Merrill pretty much serves as Gaunt's dragon for a solid portion of the novel, [[spoiler: Gaunt views him no differently than anyone else in the town, and magically creates a video of Merrill driving Alan's wife and son off the road to their deaths in an effort that he leaves for Pangborn to view to get Pangborn to kill Ace as Ace has already been wound up into killing Pangborn.]]

* HeroicBSOD: [[spoiler: Alan Pangborn suffers this when Gaunt seemingly finds the one "Needful Thing" Pangborn is looking for: a video the truth behind what happened during his wife and son's off-screen accident. It drives the up-to-then collected Pangborn into a murderous rage, and it's only thanks to Polly he snaps out of it.[[

** Polly visits the location where [[''Literature/{{Cujo}}'' a mother and her son were trapped in a car by a formerly peaceful St Bernard's]] and this incident gets mentioned a couple of other times throughout the book.

** Book Gaunt's canary yellow Tucker Talisman... which is more than just a car. It practically drives itself, has no license plates, doesn't need to be refueled, pays its own tolls, happily cruises at 100+ MPH and doesn't get any attention from the police.

* {{Expy}}: Leland Gaunt, of [[Theatre/{{Othello}} Iago]], playing people off each other with flattery and slyness, and sowing discord for no discernible human purpose other than that he finds it "diverting" and it's second nature to him by this point. Alan Pangborn also [[PracticallyJoker mentally compares his twisted sense of humor to that of the Joker]], and the description lines up there, too -- he's a tall, lean trickster with a penchant for violence and a disturbingly wide smile, feigning kindness when things are going his way and flying off the handle when they aren't.

* ThoseTwoBadGuys: The "Flying Corson Brothers" Mike and Dave, Connecticut arms dealers and drug-runners who only appear once in a flashback to give Ace Merrill a sufficient motivation to return to Castle Rock.

* TheNeedless: Ironically, Gaunt himself; the only way he seems to get tired is by emotional exhaustion, and the apartment above his storefront is completely bare -- no furniture, no bed, no anything save for curtains on the windows to keep it from looking suspicious at street-level. The only necessary thing he gets out of .