The Twilight Zone 1985 / Tropes I to P

This page covers tropes found in The Twilight Zone (1985). Tropes beginning with letters A-H can be found at Tropes A to H and tropes beginning with letters Q-Z can be found at Tropes Q to Z.

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The Twilight Zone (1985) provides examples of:

I

• I Did What I Had to Do: In "The Cold Equations", Captain Thomas Barton is forced to jettison the stowaway Marilyn Lee Cross from the Emergency Dispatch Ship as otherwise her added weight would result in the ship running out of fuel and being unable to deliver the vitally needed serum to the kala fever stricken planet Woden. However, Barton deeply regrets that it was necessary and tried to take every possible step to prevent it.
• I Gave My Word: In "Dealer's Choice", Nick - who's actually the Devil - explains that he's come to claim one of the men's souls during their poker night. After they draw cards to determine who he'll take, he offers Pete, the loser, a chance to win back his soul with one last hand of poker. When Pete wins with some help from his friend Marty, the Devil, rather than lamenting or pulling some kind of trick, accepts the loss, leaves without a fight, and even rewards the men by conjuring up a massive feast (complete with a fridge packed with all kinds of beer) for them.
• I Hate Past Me: In "The Girl I Married", Ira Richman is confronted with the spirit of The '60s version of his wife Valerie and spends several days with her. He later learns that Valerie has been doing the same thing with a younger version of him. As soon as all four of them are in the same room, the older Ira and Valerie realize that they find their hippie selves irritating. Ira tells them that they have no idea what real love is, saying that it is about commitment. He also finds his younger self's mellow attitude very grating. After they disappear, Valerie has a hard time believing that they were ever really that arrogant, naive and pompous.
• I Have Many Names: In "Ye Gods", Todd Ettinger does not recognize the name Bacchus until he looks it up in a book on Classical Mythology and learns that he was the Roman god of wine, known to the Greeks as Dionysus. Todd soon discovers that he runs Olympus Wines in downtown Los Angeles.
• I Let Gwen Stacy Die: In "The Trance", the psychiatrist Dr. Greenburg blames himself for his wife's death as he was unable to get to her in time to prevent her accident. The strange voice speaking through Leonard Randall assures him that there is nothing that he could have done but Greenburg is furious as he believes that Leonard is using him and his grief as part of his psychic powers scam.
• Immoral Journalist: In "The Misfortune Cookie", the Caustic Critic Harry Folger enjoys having restaurants shut down with his scathing reviews. He is shown to be an extremely unethical journalist when he begins writing a negative review of Mr. Lee's Chinese Cuisine before he visits it. He gives it the title "If you love your Pekingese, don't ask for a doggie bag." When he does later visit it, he orders a great deal of food but demands to be brought his check without touching any of it. His bad review of the restaurant is published in the next day's paper, causing Mr. Lee to lose many of his customers.
• Immortality Immorality: In "Our Selena is Dying", the dying Selena Brockman drains her niece Debra's Life Energy in order to become young again. Her sister Martha previously did the same thing to her own daughter Diane.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: In "The Hunters", one of the prehistoric hunter ghosts impales Dr. Klein with a spear. The sheriff discovers her body lying face down with the spear still in her back.
• Inbred and Evil: In "The Beacon", the inhabitants of the small town of Mellweather are all descended from a prominent citizen named Seth Janes who lived in the 18th Century. They believe that his spirit guides the Beacon, a lighthouse that seemingly chooses a Human Sacrifice every year, and that they must keep their bloodlines strong in order to serve him. After Dr. Dennis Barrows saves the intended victim, a little girl named Katie, he is killed by the townspeople in order to placate Seth.
• Incorruptible Pure Pureness: How Nick is ultimately defeated in "Dealer's Choice": Marty, the Nice Guy of the friend group, touches the Tarot "Death" card that the Devil pulled during the fatal poker hand with Pete. Turns out that Marty's innocence and faith are anathema to evil, and the spell on the card is broken, making Pete the winner.
• Incurable Cough of Death: In "There Was an Old Woman", Brian Harris, who has an unnamed serious illness, coughs during Hallie Parker's visit and his parents tell him that it is time to rest. He dies a week later.
• Inertial Impalement: In "The Once and Future King", Gary Pitkin, an Elvis Impersonator, gets transported to July 3, 1954, where he meets the real Elvis Presley. At first, Elvis thinks Gary is his stillborn brother Jesse, Back from the Dead. 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.
• I Never Told You My Name: In "The After Hours", Marsha Cole is surprised and confused when she is approached by a strange young boy in the toy shop Play's the Thing who knows her name and asks her to come back. His mother says that Marsha must have misheard him and that he actually said "ma'am." Marsha doesn't buy it. She later learns that she, the boy and his mother are all mannequins from the department store Satler's.
• Inner City School: In "Teacher's Aide", Miss Peters teaches English at an extremely tough inner city school where none of the students make even the slightest bit of effort and knife fights between rival gangs are common.
• Inner Monologue: In "Gramma", Georgie's inner monologue is heard throughout the episode.
• Insane Equals Violent: In "Need to Know", Mrs. Hotchkiss has gone insane after learning the meaning of life from her husband. When the government agent Edward Sayers is questioning her, she tries to attack him with the knife that she had been calmly using to cut a cake a moment earlier. Edward is stunned but manages to fight her off.
• Insectoid Aliens: In "A Day in Beaumont", Dr. Kevin Carlson and Faith frantically try to warn the authorities that a race of insectoid aliens, whose Flying Saucer they saw crash, are planning to invade Earth in 1955. Kevin and Faith later discover that they are members of this race themselves and that what they think is Earth is really Altair IV. H.G. Orson explains to them that they are taking part in a commando training simulation for their race's planned invasion of Earth and that they are experiencing memory loss.
• Insignia Rip-Off Ritual: In "The Wall", Major Alex McAndrews takes off his USAF insignia before he goes through the Gate for the second time as he has decided to settle on the Paradise Planet on the other side.
• Intangibility: In "Quarantine", Sarah has the ability to phase her hand through any solid object. She uses this power to remove Matthew Foreman's cancerous tissues after he is revived from cryo-stasis.
• Intergenerational Friendship:
  • In "Paladin of the Lost Hour", there is a more than thirty year age gap between Gaspar and Billy Kinetta but they quickly become very close friends.
  • In "Extra Innings", the down-and-out baseball player Ed Hamner, who is his late 30s, is good friends with his 12-year-old neighbor Paula, a huge baseball fan who idolizes him.
• Internal Reformist: In "Red Snow", KGB Colonel Ilyanov has spent his entire adult life working within the Soviet system to try and save lives where he can. However, for every person that he saves from execution, two more are killed. Ilyanov eventually agrees to be made a vampire so that he can create more and they can destroy the Soviet Union from the inside.
• In Spite of a Nail: In "Memories", the history of the Alternate Universe is extremely similar to ours in spite of the fact that people have been able to remember their past lives for centuries, if not millennia. For instance, the interrogator asks Mary McNeal if she was one of the Borgias, Attila the Hun or Adolf Hitler in one of her past lives. He also mentions incidents of mass murder in Russia, Guyana (seemingly the Jonestown massacre) and Uganda. It is only in recent years that history has diverged in any significant way as the burden that everyone feels because of these memories is causing society to break down.
• Interrupted Suicide:
  • In "Tooth and Consequences", the severely depressed dentist Dr. Myron Mandel is about to hang himself from the light fixture in his office when an attractive patient named Lydia Bixby enters looking for her lost hairbrush. Feeling as if he has nothing to lose, Myron asks Lydia out but she turns him down as she usually dates lawyers and pilots. After she leaves, Myron tries to hang himself again but the light fixture breaks. He falls into the arms of the Tooth Fairy.
  • In "A Saucer of Loneliness", Margaret is extremely depressed as she is being continually harassed to reveal the contents of the message given to her by the Flying Saucer so she tries to drown herself in the sea. However, she is stopped by a man who had been looking for her as he had found the copy of the message that she placed in a bottle.
• Introverted Cat Person:
  • In "The Trunk", Willy Gardner has no meaningful interaction with people as the manager of the rundown Hotel Winchester. The highlight of his day is giving a stray neighborhood cat a bowl of milk.
  • In "Cat and Mouse", the shy, timid Andrea Moffatt is delighted when a black tomcat comes through her window one evening. It turns out that the cat is Guillaume de Marchaux, who was cursed to become a cat during the day and can only revert to human form at night.
• Invisible Jerkass: In "To See the Invisible Man", Mitchell Chaplin is punished by being given a mark on his forehead that means others have to ignore him and act as if he was not there. He initially does things like walking into a women's jacuzzi room, but then... see Irony below.
• Invisible to Normals:
  • In "Personal Demons", Rockne O'Bannon is the only person who can see the strange, hooded creatures that have been following him everywhere that he goes and destroyed his car and apartment.
  • In "The Crossing", Father Mark Cassidy repeatedly sees a car driving away from St. Timothy's Church and crashing over a cliff. When he tries to get help, he realizes that he is the only one who could see it.
  • In "Rendezvous in a Dark Place", Death can typically only to be seen by the person who is about to die. However, Barbara LeMay can see him because her obsession with him means that the two of them spend so much time together.
• Invisible Wall: In "I of Newton", the demon creates an invisible wall so that Sam can't escape his classroom.
• Ironic Echo:
  • In "Dead Run", the Dispatcher tells Johnny Davis that he is applying "time honored Biblical standards" in condemning people to Hell for minor transgressions. After helping four such people escape to Heaven, Johnny recalls the story of Jesus journeying to Hell between the Crucifixion and the Resurrection to give the damned another chance and explains that he is using his own time honored Biblical standards.
  • In "Button, Button", Norma and Arthur Lewis, the couple offered the titular button, are told that if they press it, they'll receive a large sum of money, but someone they don't know will die. At the end of the episode, they've pressed the button and gotten the money, and are told that the button will now be offered to someone else. They're assured that it will be "someone you don't know."
• Ironic Hell:
  • In "Kentucky Rye", a Drunk Driver named Bob Spindler, who was killed in an accident that he caused, is doomed to spend all eternity in the titular deserted bar as punishment for having killed another driver.
  • In "The Misfortune Cookie", a cruel food critic named Harry Folger frequents a Chinese restaurant, Mr. Lee's Chinese Cuisine, whose fortunes turn out to come true. After receiving the fortune "You're Going To Die", he storms out and finds himself surrounded by Chinese restaurants, but perpetually hungry. Eventually, he receives another fortune: "You're Dead".
  • In "Take My Life... Please!", a self-centered comedian named Billy Diamond who beat a prostitute, threw his mother out into the cold, and knowingly stole material from a young, starving colleague winds up in a hell where he is forced to recount all the most horrible things he has ever done, to an audience that will only laugh at his flaws and crimes, not his act.
• Irony: In "To See The Invisible Man", Mitchell Chaplin 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'. In the end he defies this and comforts an 'invisible' woman with whom he had attempted to interact while under punishment.
• It Is Beyond Saving: In "Shelter Skelter", the Crazy Survivalist Harry Dobbs believes that the world has been destroyed by pimps, bureaucrats, hairdressers, rock stars and pornographers. He tells Nick Gatlin that he almost wishes that World War III will happen so that the "scum of the Earth" will be destroyed and people like him can build a better world.
• It's All About Me: In "To See The Invisible Man", Mitchell Chaplin sentenced to one year of invisibility. He manages to chat with a blind man named Bennett Gershe for a while, before Gershe 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, Gershe mutters "Damn you!"
• It's All Junk: In "Extra Innings", Ed Hamner has been collecting baseball cards since he was a child and has dozens, possibly hundreds. His wife Cindy doesn't see the point and accuses him of wasting money on them. Ed later decides to use the Monte Hanks baseball card to travel back to 1910 for the third time instead of giving a speech at VectroComp as Cindy had arranged. In revenge, Cindy burns all of his cards one by one, telling Paula that each one represents a day that Ed wasted.
• I Was Quite a Fashion Victim: In "The Girl I Married", Valerie Richman is embarrassed by the photograph of herself as a hippie chick in The '60s that her husband Ira carries around with him as she thinks that she looked like a bag lady.
• It Will Never Catch On: In "The World Next Door", the Barney Schlessinger of the Retro Universe has invented a super fuel called Trimbeline 3 that allows the automobile to obtain speeds of 60 miles per hour with a fuel efficiency rating of 100 miles per gallon. A newspaper article is skeptical of Barney's claims that his Trimbeline powered automobiles will replace horse-drawn carriages within a few years.

J

• Jerkass: In "Shatterday", Peter Jay Novins is a very unpleasant person. While visiting his extremely ill mother in Miami, he told her that he had to return to New York City earlier than he actually had to because he could not stand being around her any longer. He convinced a woman named Patty to leave her husband, set her and her son up in an apartment and abandoned her as soon as he became bored with her. Novins also mistreated his current girlfriend Jamie but it is not specified how. He works for a PR firm and took the Cumberland account, knowing full well that the company would destroy a small town with its unsafe environmental practices. His alter ego, who describes him as having the ethics of a weasel, is a far better person and sets about making amends for everything that the original Novins has done.
• Jerkass Has a Point: "Cat and Mouse" has Elaine who may take advantage of Andrea's timid personality at times, but even she makes a point early in the episode that Andrea shouldn't duck out on dating decent men like her co-worker Carl, just because they may not meet up to her romantic standards.
• Jungle Japes: "Cold Reading" features these coming to life inside a radio broadcast studio, including a native beating on a drum.
• Justified Criminal: In "Street of Shadows", Steve Cranston has been unemployed for a long time and his efforts to find work have been unsuccessful. The 8th Street homeless shelter where he lives with his wife Elaine and daughter Lisa will soon close because it can no longer pay its mortgage. As such, they are faced with the prospect of being thrown out on the street. Feeling as if he has no other choice, Steve breaks into the mansion of the multi-millionaire Frederick Perry and plans to rob the place. Perry discovers him almost immediately and shoots him. When Steve wakes up the next morning, he finds that he and Perry have swapped lives and identities.
• Just One Second Out of Sync: A variation in "A Matter of Minutes". On April 27, 1986, Michael and Maureen Wright are awakened by the sounds of construction. Their alarm clock says that it is 11:37am but Michael's watch reads 7:05am. They hear what they assume to be burglars downstairs but find that faceless workers are replacing all of the furniture and belongings with identical copies. Shortly afterwards, they are discovered by these workers' supervisor. He explains to them that every minute is its own separate world that must be constructed and then demolished once it has passed. Michael and Maureen have accidentally stumbled into 11:37am, which is still under construction.

K-L

• Karmic Jackpot: In "But Can She Type?", the underappreciated and overworked secretary Karen Billings is accidentally transported to an Alternate Universe in which being a secretary is considered incredibly glamorous.
• Kill Sat: In "Quarantine", Matthew Foreman designed a series of particle beam satellites for the American government before he entered suspended animation in 2023. Sarah and the other members of the Commune ask him to use one of the surviving satellites to destroy a meteor that is rapidly approaching Earth. However, it turns out that they are deceiving him using their psychic powers. They actually want him to destroy an American spacecraft containing 1,000 politicians and military figures for whom only five or ten years have passed since the nuclear war of 2043 because of Time Dilation.
• Klaatu Barada Nikto: In "Chameleon", Gerald Tyson quotes the line during a discussion about The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) with Crew Chief Brady Simmons.
• Lady of Black Magic: Subverted in "The Last Defender of Camelot". Lancelot believes that Morgan le Fay is a wicked sorceress but she tells him that her evil reputation has been greatly exaggerated. She claims that, between Merlin and Thomas Malory, she got some very bad press. Morgan proves herself to be honorable when she fights Merlin in order to protect Lancelot and Tom from his magic. She is mortally wounded in the process and, shortly before she dies, jokes that she hopes to finally get some good press out of it.
• Language Barrier: In "Wordplay", Bill Lowery discovers that the English language has changed overnight when he 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.
• Laser-Guided Karma:
  • In "The Shadow Man", Danny Hayes does nothing to stop the Shadow Man from attacking innocent people as he is reveling in the popularity that his supposed bravery has earned him. When he challenges Eric to a fight in MacGyver Park, he is attacked by the Shadow Man from under someone else's bed.
  • In "Opening Day", Joe Farrell arranges for Carl Wilkerson to die in a Hunting "Accident" so that he and Carl's wife Sally can be together. He then finds that he and Carl have changed places and fears that Carl now plans to kill him in the same way. When they go duck hunting, Joe falls into the water and dies after refusing Carl's genuine efforts to save him.
  • In "Cat and Mouse", Guillaume de Marchaux, who is trapped in the form of a cat during the day, mistreats Andrea Moffatt. He pretends to have feelings for her but is simply using her for sex. As soon as she is out of her house, he has sex with her co-worker Elaine. That night, Andrea drugs his coffee. When he regains consciousness, he has transformed into a cat and has been brought to a vet's. Andrea tells the vet that she wants to have him fixed.
• The Last Title: "The Last Defender of Camelot".
• Latex Perfection: Parodied in "A Day in Beaumont". The Insectoid Aliens are able to perfectly disguise themselves as humans using rubber face masks.
• Laughing Mad: In "Need to Know", Jack Henries begins to laugh hysterically when Wiley Whitlow tells him the meaning of life, which causes insanity in anyone who hears it. Jack then breaks into tears just as quickly as he started to laugh.
• Legacy Character: In "Paladin of the Lost Hour", Gaspar tells Billy Kinetta that when Pope Gregory XIII adopted the Gregorian calendar and advanced time by eleven days in 1582, he miscalculated by one hour. The lost hour slipped free and bounced through eternity. Gaspar is the latest paladin of the lost hour in a line going back 400 years. If he dies without passing on his watch, the entire universe will be engulfed in darkness. In order to prevent this from happening, Gaspar passes on the watch to Billy, whom he has come to trust implicitly in the time that they have known each other.
• Legion of Doom: In "Crazy as a Soup Sandwich", Volkerps is a member of the Fourth Canonic Order of Demons.
• Leprechaun:
  • In "The Little People of Killany Woods", Liam O'Shaughnessy initially mistakes the Little Green Men who have landed in Killany Woods to repair their ship for the Little People.
  • In "The Leprechaun-Artist", a Leprechaun named Shawn McGool is taking a vacation in the United States when he is spotted by Buddy, J.P. and Richie. After they capture him, he has to grant them Three Wishes.
• A Lesson Learned Too Well: In "To See the Invisible Man", the state sentences Mitchell Chaplin to a year of invisibility for the crime of coldness because he is not emotionally open with his family or co-workers. Mitchell initially relishes the opportunity to do anything that he wants with no repercussions as everyone must ignore him or face the same punishment themselves. However, the incredible loneliness eventually gets to him and he longs for ordinary human interaction. Six months into his sentence, he begs an invisible woman to talk to him but she refuses as she does not want her own sentence to be increased. Four months after his punishment has ended, the same woman approaches Mitchell and pleads with him to acknowledge her existence and ease her suffering. While Mitchell is initially reluctant, he soon hugs the woman and assures her that she is not invisible and that he cares about her. His own experience of invisibility taught him how difficult it is and led him to comfort another person in pain instead of ignoring her.
• Lie to the Beholder: In "What Are Friends For?", an Energy Being appears to Alex Mattingly and his son Jeff, thirty or so years apart, in the form of a young boy named Mike. Alex always thought that Mike was simply his Imaginary Friend but learns that he was not so imaginary after all when he sees him again as an adult. Mike tells Alex that he got the image that he is using from Alex's mind when he was a child.
• Life Drinker: In "Our Selena is Dying", the elderly Selena Brockman grabs her niece Debra's hand tightly when she comes to visit her on what is ostensibly her deathbed. The next morning, a mark appears where Selena touched Debra. Dr. Burrell tells her that it is a liver spot, which is highly unusual in someone her age. Shortly afterwards, he is shocked to discover that Selena has gained a new lease on life. Dr. Burrell receives a call that night from Debra, who has rapidly aged in the hours since he last saw her. She now appears to be in her 70s. From an old diary supplied by the handyman Orville, Burrell learns that Martha burned her arm in 1940 in the same place as her daughter Diane has a prominent burn scar. He then determines that Selena drained Debra's Life Energy and that Martha did the same thing to Diane and then assumed her identity. Selena tells him that it is the way of their family for the older generation, when nearing death, to drain the energy of the younger one. After Selena is killed in the fire accidentally started by Diane, Debra's youth is restored.
• Lighter and Softer: "The Star", an adaptation of the short story of the same title by Arthur C. Clarke. 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 Dr. Chandler shows Father Matthew Costigan 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.
• Lighthouse Point: The titular object in "The Beacon". 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.
• Literal Change of Heart: In "Appointment on Route 17", the callous businessman Tom Bennett begins to act strangely after receiving a heart transplant. He does things that he has never done before such as loosen his tie at the office and have hot dogs on the beach for lunch. At the beach, Tom is immediately attracted to a young woman who seems upset. After driving around for almost an hour the next day, he arrives at a greasy spoon on Route 17 and discovers that the woman, whose name is Mary Jo, is a waitress there. Tom can't explain why he is drawn to Mary Jo but he visits the diner every day in an attempt to bond with her. After a while, she refuses to serve him as she finds his interest in her creepy. Tom eventually learns that she is mourning her recently deceased boyfriend Jamie Adler, who donated his heart after being killed in a car accident. After calling his cardiologist, Tom discovers that it was Jamie's heart that he received. He returns to the diner and tells Mary Jo that he will be waiting for her when she decides that she is ready to date again but doesn't say anything about the heart. The experience also causes Tom to become more ethical in his business practices as he allows a client to set his own price as opposed to charging an exorbitant one as he originally intended.
• Literary Allusion Title:
  • "Her Pilgrim Soul" is a reference to a line from the poem "When You Are Old" by William Butler Yeats. Dr. Kevin Drayton reads the relevant passage from the poem to Nola Granville as they are both fans of Yeats' work. Another quotation from "When You Are Old" is included in the closing narration.
  • "The Once and Future King" is a reference to the Arthurian novel by T. H. White.
  • "The Road Less Traveled" refers to a line from the poem "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost.
  • "The Curious Case of Edgar Witherspoon" is a reference to the short story "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
  • "There Was an Old Woman" refers to the Nursery Rhyme "There Was an Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe".
• Little Green Men:
  • In "The Little People of Killany Woods", Liam O'Shaughnessy sees several three foot tall green aliens in Killany Woods. Their size and color, as well as their toadstool-shaped ship, causes him to mistake them for Leprechauns but he eventually learns the truth.
  • Discussed in "A Saucer of Loneliness". Margaret's mother tells her that their neighbors have been looking at them strangely since Margaret's contact with the Flying Saucer and that they probably think that she is a traitor who is conspiring with little green men.
• The Little Shop That Wasn't There Yesterday: In "Wong's Lost and Found Emporium", the titular shop is magical and the entrance changes location. Some people stumble on it while others have to commit years of diligent effort to track it down. David Wong finds it in the backroom of a porn shop in San Francisco after three years of searching, Mrs. Whitford finds it in Fort Lauderdale and an elderly man simply found himself there after a doctor's appointment. The emporium contains lost hopes, dreams, chances and attributes that people seek to regain. David Wong is searching for his compassion, Melinda for her sense of humor, Mrs. Whitford for lost time and the elderly man for the respect of his children. Each lost attribute appears in a glowing ball, which everyone except the intended recipient can see, and takes the form of a physical object or animal. The recipients must follow the instructions on the label to benefit from it.
• Littlest Cancer Patient:
  • In "Grace Note", Mary Miletti, who is in her early teens, is dying of leukemia but she is resigned to her fate. She is more concerned about her elder sister Rosemarie achieving her dream of becoming an opera star than her own impending death. When she sees a shooting star, she selflessly wishes for Rosemarie to see the success that she will become in the future.
  • In "There Was an Old Woman", Brian Harris, who is about seven or eight, is dying of an unspecified disease. He is a kind-hearted and happy boy who loves the books of Hallie Parker, especially Creatures in the Closet. Brian is delighted when Hallie visits him with a signed copy of the book and then reads it to him. The following week, he dies and his ghost appears to Hallie. He asks her to read to him and his friends, a group of about dozen other child ghosts.
• Living Shadow: In "The Shadow Man", the titular entity is a living shadow that lives under Danny Hayes' bed. It has no features of any kind and resembles the silhouette of a man in a hat and trenchcoat.
• Locked in a Room: In "Ye Gods", Todd Ettinger uses a spell provided by Bacchus to trap Cupid and Megaera in his office so that they can reconcile. They eventually manage to do so and get back together.
• Long-Lived:
  • In "A Small Talent for War", the alien ambassador's race live for at least several hundred years.
  • In "The Storyteller", Micah Frost admits to his teacher Dorothy Livingston that his family have managed to keep his 141-year-old great-great-great-grandfather alive for so long by reading him part of a story every night but not finishing it until the next night. For generations, the Frosts have believed that the only thing keeping him alive is the anticipation. Dorothy is extremely skeptical and questions whether it is right to keep someone alive past their natural time. After Micah falls from a tree and breaks his arm, he has to spend the night with the local doctor and his wife. He is concerned that the old man will die without his nightly story. Although Dorothy is not convinced, she reads him the rest of the previous night's story and begins another one as she does not want to risk the old man dying. In the final scene, the elderly Dorothy is telling her mother the story of an apparent sighting of the adult Micah in 1986 but she does not finish it in order to keep her mother alive for one more night.
  • In "Crazy as a Soup Sandwich", the demon Volkerps is 32,000 years old.
• Loony Fan: In "Special Service", one of John Selig's biggest fans enters the JSTV executive Arthur Spence's office through the window and tells John that she wants to have his baby or at least a lock of his hair. John just about manages to get away from her.
• Lotus-Eater Machine: In "Dreams for Sale", the workers in a future world are connected to a Dreamatron which creates a fully interactive dream for them, depicting idyllic or exciting worlds, when they are not on shift. Options include Country Picnic (experienced by Jenny), Jail Break and Caribbean Cruise.
• Louis Cypher: In "Dealer's Choice" a group of friends find themselves playing poker with a stranger named "Nick", who keeps getting three sixes in every hand he is dealt...
• Love at First Sight: In "Song of the Younger World", Amy Hawkline and Tanner Smith fall madly in love immediately after their first meeting, which involves only a very brief conversation.
• Love Triangle:
  • In "The Shadow Man", Danny Hayes has a crush on Lianna Ames, the most popular girl at Willow Creek Junior High School. However, she is dating Eric, a member of the swim team who frequently bullies Danny.
  • In "Opening Day", Sally Wilkerson, who is married to Carl, is having an affair with their golf instructor Joe Farrell. During a duck hunt, she has Joe arrange for Carl to be killed in a Hunting "Accident" so that the two of them can be together. When Joe does so, he finds that he and Carl have swapped places. He is now Sally's husband while Carl is her lover, whom he thinks is trying to kill him.
  • In "Her Pilgrim Soul", Dr. Kevin Drayton, whose marriage to Carol is failing, falls in love with Nola Granville, whose soul occupies the holographic projector that he created. It turns out that Kevin is the Reincarnation of Nola's husband Robert Goldstone and that Nola appeared to Kevin in order to provide closure for the grief that Robert suffered when she died in childbirth.
  • In "The Convict's Piano", Mickey Shaughnessy and Eddie O'Hara were both in love with Ellen in 1928. In order to remove his romantic rival, Mickey had Eddie framed for murder and he received a life sentence.
• Ludd Was Right: In "Quarantine", 80% of Earth's population were killed in the nuclear war of 2043 and the survivors made the decision to rid themselves of all forms of advanced machinery out of fear that it would happen again. However, they still use genetic engineering in order to achieve Bio-Augmentation.

M

• The Mafia:
  • In "Healer", Jackie Thompson worked for a mob boss named Joseph Rubello in the 1970s. After he botched a delivery, two of Rubello's thugs beat Jackie so severely that he ended up in hospital.
  • In "Crazy as a Soup Sandwich", Arky Lochner owes $165,000 (at a daily interest of 750%) to Nino Lancaster, a mob boss who runs all of the criminal enterprises in the city and has many cops in his pocket.
• Make It Look Like an Accident: In "Dead Woman's Shoes", Kyle Montgomery murdered his wife Susan by pushing her off a balcony. He later told the police that it was an accident and she fell to her death because she was drunk.
• Mark of the Beast: In "A Message from Charity", Squire Jonas Hacker tells Charity Payne to strip so that he can search her body for the Devil's mark. She immediately realizes that Hacker intends to rape her as Faith Tanner was extremely upset when he subjected her to the same search the previous year.
• Married to the Job: In "The Wall", Major Alex McAndrews' wife Sarah left him as he was so committed to the Air Force and the principles of honor, duty and integrity that he completely ignored her. She told him that she did not believe in bigamy.
• Master of Illusion: In "What Are Friends For?", Jeff Mattingly's Not-So-Imaginary Friend Mike is able to conjure up images of horses and race cars for them to play with. Jeff wonders how this is possible but Mike tells him that he can't tell anyone about it or they won't be able to play together anymore.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane:
  • In "The Beacon", it is never made clear whether the Beacon is truly controlled by the spirit of Seth Janes as the people of Mellweather believe or whether it is simply an old lighthouse with a faulty mechanism as suggested by Dr. Dennis Barrows.
  • In "Many, Many Monkeys", Jean Reed and later Nurse Claire Hendricks come to believe that the plague of blindness spreading throughout the US was caused by people being cold and heartless towards each other. The government's explanation is that it was caused by the release of bacteria into the atmosphere after an accident in a top secret biological research lab in Alaska. It is not made clear which theory is correct.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Lampshaded in "Paladin of the Lost Hour". Gaspar tells Billy Kinetta that he shares his name with one of The Three Wise Men, the magi who saw the Star of Bethlehem and visited the newborn Jesus. He adds that Gaspar means master of the treasure, keeper of the secrets, paladin of the palace. Gaspar later explains that he is the latest in a long line of guardians of the lost hour going back to Pope Gregory XIII's adoption of the Gregorian calendar in 1582.
  • In "Dealer's Choice", the Devil uses the name "Nick" when he plays poker with Pete, Jake, Tony and Marty. Old Nick is a common nickname for the Devil.
  • In-Universe in "Cold Reading". The brave, stalwart and honorable title character of the UBS radio series Dick Noble, African Explorer.
• Meaningful Rename: In "Healer", the small-time crook Jackie Thompson begins calling himself "Brother John" after setting himself up as a Fake Faith Healer using the healing stone that he stole from a museum. After he realizes that it is wrong to use the stone for a selfish purpose, he begins calling himself simply John.
• Mecha-Mooks: In "To See the Invisible Man", floating security bots monitor Mitchell Chaplin and other invisible people to ensure that no one violates Citizen's Law 24824 and interacts with them.
• Meet Cute: In "Ye Gods", Todd Ettinger and the woman with whom Cupid makes him fall in love first meet when they bump into each other at the reception of an outdoor café. At the end of the episode, they meet again when the woman crashes her car into Todd's. Having realized that they are meant to be together, they kiss in the middle of the street.
• Mega Neko: In "The Elevator", Roger and Will find a dead house cat that grew as large as a lion or tiger after eating the super food created by their father to solve world hunger. They are concerned because it was clearly killed by something larger, which turns out to be a Giant Spider.
• Mental Time Travel: In "Time and Teresa Golowitz", Bluestone's mind is sent back in time to the body of his 16-year-old self in October 1948.
• Message in a Bottle: In "A Saucer of Loneliness", the small eponymous saucer arrives on Earth and passes on its message to an extremely lonely woman named Margaret, who refuses to divulge its contents to anyone. However, she does make several copies of the message and puts them in bottles that she throws into the ocean. A man finds one of them and stops her from killing herself. He then reveals that he knows what the message said:
  "There is, in certain living souls, a loneliness unspeakable, so great it must be shared as company is shared by lesser beings. Such a loneliness is mine. And know by this that an immensity is one lonelier than you."
• Mind Virus: In "Need to Know", the government agent Edward Sayers is sent to the small town of Loma Valley, Washington to investigate a mysterious outbreak of insanity. With the help of a local woman named Amanda Strickland, he determines that the insanity is spread from person to person like a contagion. He manages to track the contagion to its source: Professor Jeffrey Potts, who has recently returned from Asia. While there, Potts learned the meaning of life. He told his brother Andrew, who was unable to keep it to himself. The meaning of life is seemingly an Awful Truth which causes anyone who learns it to immediately go insane.
• Minimalist Cast:
  • Sherman Hemsley and Ron Glass are the only actors to appear in "I of Newton".
  • Stephen Geoffreys, Robert Prescott, Brandon Bluhm and Douglas Emerson are the only actors to appear in "The Elevator". The latter two only appear very briefly in one scene.
  • Barret Oliver, Darlanne Fluegel and Frederick Long are the only actors to appear on screen in "Gramma". For the majority of the running time, Oliver is by himself.
  • Mare Winningham, Brad Davis and Basil Hoffman are the only actors to appear in "Button, Button".
  • Lisa Eilbacher, Antony Hamilton and Kip Gilman are the only credited actors to appear in "Nightsong".
  • Akosua Busia, Cindy Harrell, Leslie Ackerman and Raye Birk are the only actors to appear in "Lost and Found".
  • Steve Kanaly, Laura Press and Benjamin Barrett are the only actors to appear in "Stranger in Possum Meadows".
  • After the first scene, Esai Morales and Maury Chaykin are the only actors to appear in "A Game of Pool".
• The Mirror Shows Your True Self: In "Dead Man's Shoes", while possessing Maddie Duncan's body, Susan Montgomery sees her own reflection in the mirror instead of Maddie's.
• Mirror Universe: "The World Next Door" is a rare example where the universe in question is not particularly evil, just different. The protagonist ends up permanently switching places with his alternate, to their mutual happiness.
• Miscarriage of Justice: In "The Convict's Piano", Ricky Frost was wrongfully convicted of the murder of his ex-girlfriend because her body was found in a car that had been stolen from him.
• Misery Builds Character: In "Cat and Mouse", Andrea Moffatt's experience of being mistreated and used by Guillaume de Marchaux teaches her not to be weak and submissive anymore. She also realizes that the kind of True Love found in romance novels does not exist in the real world and finally agrees to go out with her co-worker Carl so that she can have a chance at real happiness.
• Misfortune Cookie: In "The Misfortune Cookie", the Caustic Critic Harry Folger begins receiving fortune cookies with extremely accurate predictions when he visits Mr. Lee's Chinese Cuisine. They are initially favorable but turn darker as time goes on. The first says "A grand reward awaits you just around the corner." As he is leaving the restaurant, a bank robber who has just stolen $100,000 in diamonds runs into him, allowing the police to catch him. The bank manager gives him $1,000 as a reward. The second fortune cookie says "April arrives today bringing romance." Harry dismisses its prediction as it is September. He later meets a woman who asks him for directions. When they arrange a date, she tells him that her name is April Hamilton. On his third visit to the restaurant, Harry's fortune cookie says "You're going to die." He is furious and storms out but immediately experiences severe hunger. He eats at restaurant after restaurant but his hunger is insatiable. He then receives a fourth and final cookie which says "You're dead," revealing that he is trapped in an Ironic Hell.
• "Mister Sandman" Sequence: In "The Convict's Piano", there is one whenever Ricky Frost travels back in time after playing a song from that era on the piano that he found in prison:
  • When he plays "Maple Leaf Rag" by Scott Joplin, he finds himself at a bandstand in a park during the middle of a celebration in 1899. The men are wearing flat straw boaters and three-piece suits with matching waistcoats while the women have the Gibson Girl-style bouffant hairdos and gorgeous dresses typical of The Gay '90s.
  • When he plays "Over There" by George M. Cohan, he arrives in the Shamrock Club in 1917. The clientele largely consists of World War I-era doughboys who are getting ready to ship out to fight in Europe. Most of the women present having bob cuts or their hair in ringlet curls.
  • When he plays "Something to Watch Over Me" by George Gershwin, he arrives at a private party in Chicago in 1928. It is being held by the gangster Mickey Shaughnessy and the guests are all drinking illegal alcohol. Like every other women at the party, Shaughnessy's girlfriend Ellen is a flapper. Shaughnessy asks Ricky to play "S' Wonderful", the most popular song of 1928 which was also by Gershwin.
• The Mole: In "Room 2426", Dr. Martin Decker's cellmate Joseph is an agent of the State. He was instructed by Dr. Ostroff to convince Martin that teletransportation was real so that he could learn the location of Martin's bacteria research.
• Monochrome Apparition: In "Devil's Alphabet", the ghosts of the deceased members of the Devil's Alphabet Society are entirely green.
• Morally Bankrupt Banker: In "20/20 Vision", the farmer's bank president Cutler orders the newly promoted loan officer Warren Cribbens to foreclose any property with payments outstanding. Cutler knows that a state highway is going to be built in the area and hopes to be able to sell hundreds of acres of land to the government at a huge personal profit. Warren sees the impact that foreclosure will have on Vern Slater using his ability to see the future and offers him a loan. Cutler fires him as the highway is going to pass directly through the Slater property and he has therefore lost a fortune.
• Morton's Fork: At the end of "A Little Peace and Quiet", Penny freezes time just before a massive nuclear missile can hit her hometown. She's faced with a horrible choice that we never get to see her make: keep everyone, including her own family, frozen forever, preventing their deaths but leaving herself the only conscious, active person in an unmoving world, or unfreeze time, killing herself, everyone around her, and, by implication, the entire planet via mutually assured destruction.
• The Mourning After: In "Dream Me a Life", Roger Simpson Leeds is still devastated by the death of his beloved wife Rachel three years earlier. He makes little to no effort to interact with his close friend Frank, their fellow retirement home residents or even his children and grandchildren. Frank takes every opportunity to try and bring him out of his shell, inviting him to play poker every night, but Roger always turns him down. The experience of helping Laurel Kincaid overcome her grief at her husband's death in her dream allows him to do the same thing. As a result, Roger gains a new lease on life.
• Mundane Afterlife: In "Dead Run", the center of Hell is a dark, violent industrial complex. It is surrounded by the Outer Circles, which are indistinguishable from ordinary countryside.
• Mundane Wish:
  • In "Time and Teresa Golowitz", the Prince of Darkness offers the recently deceased Bluestone the opportunity to visit anywhere in the universe at any time. He is shocked when Bluestone wishes to have sex with Mary Ellen Cosgrove at a high school party in October 1948.
  • In "The Trunk", in order to test whether the titular object can really grant his every wish, Willy Gardner wishes for a jug of cool root beer. He is delighted when it appears in the trunk.
• Murder Ballad: In "Love is Blind", the Blind Musician begins to sing a song about a man killing his wife's lover as soon as Jack Haines enters the Mustang bar. It doesn't take Jack long to realize that the song is describing exactly what he intends to do.
• Murder Is the Best Solution:
  • In "Song of the Younger World", Mordecai Hawkline threatens to arrange for Tanner Smith to be found dead if his daughter Amy ever sees him again. He later tries to shoot him in cold blood. Although he is unsuccessful, he kills Hoakie, who had tried to stop him, without a second thought.
  • In "Love is Blind", Jack Haines overheard his wife Elaine talking to a man over the phone and arranging to meet him at the Mustang bar. Assuming that she is cheating on him, Jack drives to the Mustang and intends to shoot the man as soon as he sees him. It turns out that Elaine was meeting Jack's best friend Taylor so that they could pick out new tires for his truck as an anniversary surprise.
• Murderous Mannequin: In "The After Hours", Marsha Cole is stalked by mannequins in an after-hours department store.
• My Future Self and Me:
  • In "One Life, Furnished in Early Poverty", Gus Rosenthal is transported back in time to the 1940s and befriends his past self. The young Gus never finds out that Harry Rosenthal, a writer from Los Angeles conducting research for a new story, is himself from the future. However, he comes to view him as a surrogate father who, unlike his actual father Lou, plays with him and reads him stories. The young Gus is very upset when "Mr. Rosenthal" tells him that he has to leave as it makes him feel unloved and abandoned. He tells his future self that he will be successful one day and will spit in his face and beat him up. When the boy runs away, the older Gus remembers that he made his vow to become successful after Mr. Rosenthal left and never came back.
  • In "Grace Note", Rosemarie Miletti, who is from March 1966, is sent 20 years into the future and learns that her dream of becoming an opera star will come true as her future self is performing La Traviata in the Lincoln Center. Rosemarie does not interact with her older self and can't be seen by either her or her younger sister Dorothy when she enters her dressing room. However, the older Rosemarie seems to be able to sense her younger self's presence, possibly because she remembers being her.
• My God, What Have I Done?:
  • In "Private Channel", Mr. Williams, who plans to blow up the plane, is overcome with remorse when he hears the passengers' thoughts through Keith Barnes' Walkman. One passenger's thoughts about his young daughter Jenny strike a chord with him as he was motivated by the death of his own wife and daughter, who was much the same age as Jenny.
  • In "The Wall", Major Alex McAndrews returns to Earth through the Gate as he feels duty bound to report what he has discovered on the Paradise Planet. After he reports that the planet is an agrarian society without weapons of any kind, the US government begins to draw up plans to conquer it and use it as a staging ground to launch surprise attacks on its enemies. Alex comes to deeply regret his decision. Believing that he is about to introduce a snake to the Garden of Eden, he sabotages the scientific equipment which is maintaining the Gate and goes through it just before it collapses.
• My Grandson, Myself: In "Red Snow", the Communist Party secretary Ivan Povin tries to convince KGB Colonel Ilyanov that Valentina Orlova, who appears to be in her 30s, is the daughter of the woman of the same name who was exiled to the Siberian gulag in 1936. However, Ilyanov does not believe him as they are absolutely identical. He discovers that she is a vampire when he finds her feeding on a wolf in the forest that night.
• Mystical Plague: In "Many, Many Monkeys", Jean Reed speculates that she and everyone else afflicted with the plague of blindness are being punished because they have become monkeys who see, hear and speak no evil. She thinks that nature has turned a blind eye to humans because of their diminished humanity. Although Nurse Claire Hendricks initially dismisses this idea as preposterous, she later becomes convinced that Jean is correct, even after the government links the plague to the accidental release of bacteria.
• Mythology Gag:
  • In "Wish Bank", Mr. Brent's superior at the Department of Magical Venues is Mr. Willoughby. He wants to talk to Brent about the Jameson account.
  • In "Profile in Silver", the time traveler Professor Joseph Fitzgerald prevents the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Several hours later, the announcement "We will now return to our regular programming" is heard on CBS, followed by the theme of The Twilight Zone (1959). "Night Call" was originally intended to air on November 22, 1963 but the coverage of the assassination resulted in it being rescheduled. It eventually aired on February 7, 1964.
  • In "A Day in Beaumont", Dr. Kevin Carlson reports that the Flying Saucer crashed near Willoughby. There is also a sign in Pop's diner that reads "It's been a pleasure...serving you."

N

• Named After Somebody Famous: In "The Star", the survey ship Magellan is named after the 16th Century explorer Ferdinand Magellan.
• Named by the Adaptation:
  • In "Examination Day", Dickie Jordan's parents are named Richard, Sr. and Ruth. In the short story by Henry Slesar, their first names are not given.
  • In "Wong's Lost and Found Emporium", the young woman whom David Wong meets in the emporium is named Melinda, at least in the script. In the short story by William F. Wu, she is not named.
  • In "One Life, Furnished in Early Poverty", Gus Rosenthal's parents' names are Lou and Sarita. In the short story by Harlan Ellison, their first names are not revealed.
  • In "The Star", the protagonist's name is Father Matthew Costigan. He is unnamed in the short story by Arthur C. Clarke.
  • In "To See the Invisible Man", the names of the man sentenced to a year of invisibility and the blind man who briefly talks to him are Mitchell Chaplin and Bennett Gershe respectively. In the short story by Robert Silverberg, their names are not given.
  • In "Dead Run", the protagonist is named Johnny Davis. His surname is not given in the short story by Greg Bear.
  • In "A Saucer of Loneliness", the protagonist's name is Margaret. She is not named in the short story by Theodore Sturgeon.
  • In "Voices in the Earth", the leader of the ghosts of the dead Earth is not named. In the short story adaptation by Alan Brennert, his name is given as Blaine.
  • In "The Cold Equations", the captain of the Emergency Dispatch Ship is named Thomas Barton. In the short story by Tom Godwin, his first name is not given.
• Napoleon Delusion: In "Wong's Lost and Found Emporium", David Wong tells Mrs. Whitford that he met twelve people who claimed to be the Second Coming of Jesus and one who claimed to the reincarnation of the High Priest of Lemuria during his three year search for the Lost and Found Emporium.
• Naturalized Name: In "Time and Teresa Golowitz", Bluestone's original surname was Blaustein but he changed it at the beginning of his career as a composer.
• Near-Death Clairvoyance: In "Healer", after being brought back to life by Jackie Thompson, Harry Faulk describes moving outside of his body and being able to see all of his neighbors gathered around him when he was temporarily dead.
• Nested Story: In "The Storyteller", the elderly Dorothy Livingston sees a man with a prominent scar on his right cheek while visiting her niece Heather in 1986. She tells Heather that she believes this man to be Micah Frost, whom she taught at the beginning of her long career in 1933. Micah claimed that he was able to keep his 141-year-old great-great-great-grandfather alive by telling him serialized stories every night. After following the adult Micah to a hotel room, Dorothy opens the door to see if the old man is still alive at almost 200. It turns out that this is a story that Dorothy is recounting for her mother, whom she has managed to keep alive in the same way. As such, it is not clear whether Dorothy's encounter with the adult Micah really happened or whether is something that she made up for her mother's benefit.
• Never Got to Say Goodbye: In "One Life, Furnished in Early Poverty", Gus Rosenthal visits his old hometown and finds himself in the past. During that time, he meets his father Lou. Not telling him who he is, he says that his father was always angry and he never got the chance to tell him that he loved him.
• Never Suicide: In "Red Snow", KGB Colonel Ilyanov does not believe that Major Yuri Andreev, the previous investigator sent to the Siberian gulag, cut his own throat as is generally believed. When he examines Andreev's frozen body, he immediately notices that there is no blood on the wound, indicating that the cut was made after his death. He later learns that Andreev was killed by vampires.
• Never the Selves Shall Meet: Discussed in "Shatterday". When Peter Jay Novins threatens to go to his apartment and fight his alter ego, the alter ego speculates that this would be a very bad idea as each of them could be destroyed in the process. He cites the theory that only one of each thing can exist in the same place at the same time. This proves not to be the case when the two of them come face to face in the final scene. It is implied that the alter ego knew this already.
• New Eden: In "Voices in the Earth", the ghosts of the dead Earth tell Professor Donald Knowles that they have the power to restore Earth's biosphere. However, they are reluctant to do so as the process requires a great deal of energy and could destroy what is left of their consciousness. Knowles accuses them of being cowards, just like the people who made Earth uninhabitable in the first place. This appears to shame the ghosts into doing the right thing as the biosphere is restored and the first signs of life are detected in the oceans. As the ghosts were able to accelerate evolution, Earth will soon be teeming with life again.
• Newspaper Dating:
  • In "Grace Note", after being transported through time, Rosemarie Miletti picks up a copy of The New York Herald and learns that it is March 22, 1986, 20 years in her future.
  • In "The Once and Future King", Gary Pitkin realizes that he has gone back in time and is talking to the real Elvis Presley when he finds a copy of The Commercial Appeal dated Monday July 3, 1954 with a prominent photo of Dwight D. Eisenhower on the front page.
• Nice Character, Mean Actor: In "Take My Life... Please!", Billy Diamond presents himself as "America's hottest comic" and has audiences "all over the world" going gaga over his acts. In reality, he is an abusive drunk who knowingly and willfully steals the material of struggling comedians (one of whom actually had him at gunpoint)... which becomes the core of his Ironic Hell.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: In "Street of Shadows", Frederick Perry is dating the famous film star Lana Taylor.
• No Ending: In "The Storyteller", Dorothy Livingston and her niece Heather follow a man believed to be Micah Front, whom she taught in 1933, to a hotel room in order to determine if he has managed to keep his great-great-great-grandfather alive by telling him stories and not finishing them until the next night. If he has done so, the old man would be almost 200 years old in 1986. As Dorothy is about to open the door, it is revealed that it is part of a story that she is telling her mother. The episode ends with Dorothy saying that she will have to wait until the next night to hear the resolution.
• No Name Given:
  • In "Ye Gods", the woman with whom Todd Ettinger falls in love after being struck by Cupid's arrow (four times) is never named.
  • In "Paladin of the Lost Hour", the Marine who was killed saving Billy Kinetta from a Viet Cong ambush during The Vietnam War is never named.
  • In "The Burning Man", neither the disheveled man who rants about evil nor the strange boy in the white suit are named.
  • In "A Small Talent for War", Mr. Fraser, the US ambassador to the United Nations, is the only character given a name.
  • In "Gramma", the title character is never named.
  • In "Dead Run", the Dispatcher in charge of the Celestial Bureaucracy is not named.
  • In "A Saucer of Loneliness", the man on the beach who stops Margaret from committing suicide is not named.
  • In "The Hunters", the sheriff is not named even though he is a major character.
  • In "Love is Blind", the Blind Musician who can see the future is not given a name.
• Nostalgia Filter:
  • In "Time and Teresa Golowitz", Bluestone fondly remembers Mary Ellen Cosgrove as having a perfectly formed body at 16, a cross between Betty Grable and Wonder Woman. When he is sent back to October 1948, however, he finds that her body is less polished than he remembers it being. He admits to the Prince of Darkness that he can't go through with his plan to have sex with her as it would make him feel like a child molester.
  • In "The Girl I Married", Ira and Valerie Richman are both concerned that they have sold out and abandoned all of the dreams and the ideals that they had as hippies in The '60s. Each of them wishes that the other was still the person that they married. After they are visited by the spirits of their hippie selves, however, they realize that they still love each other and their lives are far from over. They also find their younger selves more than a little irritating. Although they have matured from their hippie days of LSD and driving around in a van, Ira and Valerie still want to make the world a better place in their own way.
• Not-So-Imaginary Friend: In "What Are Friends For?", a young boy named Jeff Mattingly meets another boy named Mike in the woods, who turns out to be an immortal being of light.
• Not-So-Phony Psychic: In "The Trance", Leonard Randall is a con artist who claims to be able to channel the spirit of Delos, a warrior who lived in Atlantis 10,000 years ago, by placing himself into a trance. Delos is nothing more than the invention of Leonard and his business partner Don, who have made a small fortune by taking advantage of gullible people. It soon becomes clear that Leonard's powers are actually real as he manages to channel an extremely wise and benevolent being who speaks through him without his knowledge. This strange voice exposes Leonard's claims about Delos as fraudulent during his first TV appearance on Daphne Blake's talk show and later tells Leonard that it will spend the two or three decades teaching him the wisdom of the universe.
• Number of the Beast:
  • In "Dealer's Choice", Pete, Jake and Tony find it odd that Nick, who is filling in for their regular player Norman, always gets three sixes in every hand of poker. They come to the conclusion that he is the Devil. Later when Nick agrees to play one hand for Pete's immortal soul, he puts up $18, which Jake points out is 6 + 6 + 6. Peter insists that he instead put up $19.
  • In "Take My Life...Please!", Billy Diamond is told by Max, his new agent in Hell, that he can get (almost) anything that he wants by dialing 666 on the phone in his hotel suite.

O

• Oh, Crap!: As noted above under From Bad to Worse, in "Cold Reading", when it's pointed out to the old-time radio-show director what kind of things are still coming in the jungle-adventure script that his unintentional magic wish has brought to life. And then again at the very end, he combines it with a Big "NO!", when he belatedly realizes what kind of story the announcer is plugging for next week's show.
• Odd Friendship:
  • In "The Star", Father Matthew Costigan, a Jesuit priest and an astrophysicist, is close friends with Dr. Chandler, an atheist physician and one of his shipmates aboard the survey ship Magellan. They frequently have polite discussions about whether God is responsible for the beauty of the universe or whether it is merely random.
  • In "Monsters!", a young monster movie fan named Toby Michaels becomes friends with a 158-year-old vampire named Emile Francis Bendictson, who has just moved next door.
• Oireland: In "The Little People of Killany Woods", Liam O'Shaughnessy is a lazy, shiftless Irishman with a well-deserved reputation for telling tall tales, which he invariably does at the pub Kelly's. The mean-spirited and boorish Mike Mulvaney, another heavy drinker, is angered by Liam's stories of having seen Leprechauns in Killany Woods - which turn out to be aliens - and throws him out of the pub head first.
• The Old Convict: In "The Convict's Piano", Eddie O'Hara was framed for murder by the gangster Mickey Shaughnessy in 1928. When Ricky Frost meets him in 1986, he has been in prison for 58 years.
• Older Than They Look:
  • In "Red Snow", KGB Colonel Ilyanov meets a young woman named Valentina Orlova soon after arriving in the Siberian gulag. When he consults her file, he discovers that she was exiled there by Josef Stalin in 1936. He later learns that she is a vampire and is in her 80s even though she looks 50 years younger.
  • In "Aqua Vita", Christie Copperfield's friend and co-worker Shauna Allen appears to be in her mid to late 20s but she is actually 46. She tells Christie that she drinks a brand of bottled water called Aqua Vita which makes anyone who drinks it look much younger than their actual age. When Christie orders some for herself, she is surprised when the 30-ish delivery man calls her "missy" and quickly realizes that he is much younger than he looks. However, when she asks him for his true age, he advises her not to ask that question. After Christie has been using Aqua Vita for several days, she discovers that it has a side effect that Shauna didn't mention: you must keep drinking it or you age rapidly in appearance.
  • In "Our Selena is Dying", Martha Brockman is at least in her 70s but appears to be 40 years younger as she has stolen her daughter Diane's Life Energy.
• The Omnipotent: In "I of Newton", the demon boasts about the seemingly limitless scope of his powers. He can travel to the Andromeda galaxy and back in a microsecond, make two electrons occupy the same quantum state, has access to every piece of recorded information in multiple universes and can visit alternate histories. Sam manages to defeat him by setting him an impossible task: he tells him to get lost.
• One-Word Title: "Shatterday", "Wordplay", "Chameleon", "Healer", "Monsters!", "Quarantine", "Gramma", "Nightsong" and "Memories".
• Only Friend: In "The Shadow Man", Peter is Danny Hayes' only friend. The other students at Willow Creek Junior High School bully him or ignore him, at least until they learn of his apparent bravery in going out after dark when the Shadow Man is on the prowl.
• On One Condition: In "A Game of Pool", Jesse Cardiff laments that he will never be regarded as the greatest pool player as long as people compare him to the deceased Fats Brown and wishes that he could play a game against him to settle the question once and for all. Fats' ghost then appears and agrees to play one game of pool with Jesse on condition that Jesse will die if he loses. Although he is initially reluctant, Jesse accepts. Jesse loses the game and expects to die immediately. However, Fats reveals that he meant that Jesse would die forgotten, as is the destiny of all second raters.
• Ontological Mystery: "A Matter of Minutes" opens with a couple, Michael and Maureen Wright, waking up to the sound of blue blank-faced workers loading stuff into their house, along with every other house in the neighborhood. This winds up being a short mystery, however, since after they wind up stumbling across a Blank White Void, they meet a man dressed in orange who explains that they are essentially backstage time itself, seeing one particular minute being made. And now, he doesn't want them to leave...
• Our Ghosts Are Different:
  • In "Voices in the Earth", the historian Professor Donald Knowles visits the devastated Earth aboard a survey ship 1,000 years after humanity abandoned it. While exploring the ruins of a library, the ghosts of people who were unable to get off the planet appear to him. The ghosts' leader explains that they are unable to travel through warp space safely as they have no ships and previous efforts have resulted in either their destruction or insanity. They are therefore tied to Earth but plan to leave it by taking control of Knowles' body. However, Knowles is eventually successful in convincing them to use their powers of restore the biosphere even though what is left of their consciousness will most likely be destroyed in the process. Before he leaves the living Earth, Knowles assures the ghosts, who may no longer be able to hear him, that humanity will return to reclaim the planet one day as they had hoped.
  • In "The Crossing", Father Mark Cassidy is haunted by the apparition of a car containing his long deceased girlfriend Kelly crashing over a cliff. The original accident, which happened more than 20 years earlier, was caused by his careless driving. It is something for which he has been trying to atone ever since. He finally realizes that the car is appearing to him so that he can get into it and die in the crash, thereby gaining peace and salvation. Several days later, Kelly's ghost is seen at his funeral. She places a rose on his casket as it is being carried out of St. Timothy's Church.
  • In "The Hunters", the ghosts of prehistoric hunters inhabit the paintings found on the walls of a 12,000-year-old cave. Every night, they leave the walls and enter the real world to kill animals belonging to the local farmers such as sheep, cattle and a brood mare. The hunters then go back onto the walls before morning, though their positions often change. After killing Dr. Klein, they are able to take her back with them onto one of the walls as a trophy. The sheriff seemingly destroys them when he washes away all of the paintings.
  • In "There Was an Old Woman", the ghosts of Brian Harris and about a dozen other kids appear to the children's author Hallie Parker in her home and ask her to read to them. Hallie is deeply moved and agrees to do so, glad that she can once again be useful.
  • In "A Game of Pool", Fats Brown comes down from the afterlife as soon as Jesse Cardiff inadvertently challenges him to a pool game.
• Our Vampires Are Different:
  • In "Monsters!", the vampire Emile Francis Bendictson explains to Toby Michaels that most of what he has learned about vampires from the monster movies that he loves so much is incorrect. Becoming a vampire is more like contracting a disease than dying and returning as The Undead. It also doesn't mean that an infected person is granted eternal life and stops aging altogether. Mr. Benedictson became a vampire at 11 years old and appears to be in his early 80s in 1986, 147 years after he was infected. He is not evil but simply a kind old man who has returned to his native Mill Valley to die. Vampires are also immune to sunlight, garlic and the cross. Most significantly, there is something in a vampire's biology that activates a recessive gene in ordinary humans when in close proximity, causing them to mutate into monsters who destroy vampires. It acts as a genetic defense mechanism.
  • In "Red Snow", the vampires living in the Siberian gulag have fangs, sleep in coffins and are killed by sunlight. However, they are not evil. In exchange for protection during the summer months, they protect the townspeople from any possible source of danger. Aside from thieves and murderers, they never feed on humans. These vampires also despise the Soviet Union for all the suffering that it has caused the Russian people.
• Out of the Frying Pan: In "Crazy as a Soup Sandwich", a loser named Arky Lochner sells his soul to the demon Volkerps in exchange for winning at the horse races, only to get cheated. He goes to the mobster Nino Lancaster, whom he borrowed his betting money from, begging for protection and Nino does—because he's an arch-demon in human form, and now Arky owes his soul to a worse demon.

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• Panspermia: In "A Small Talent for War", the alien ambassador explains to the United Nations Security Council that Earth is one of several thousand planets that his people seeded with life and where they sped up evolution two million years ago. They have deemed the experiment on Earth to be a failure due to the small talent for war that humanity displays. The Security Council doesn't realize until the next day that the aliens breed warriors to fight for them across the galaxy and that humanity's talent for war is too small to be of any use to them.
• Paradise Planet: In "The Wall", Major Alex McAndrews travels through the Gate and discovers that it leads to a peaceful, agrarian society. Its leader Baret tells him that there is no hatred, poverty or violence, no possessions to steal, no religion save the sancity of life and no law save kindness to one another. Captain Henry Kincaid compares it to Heaven and the Garden of Eden. 2nd Lieutenant Emilio Perez, who specializes in astronavigation, has determined that it is nowhere near Earth.
• Paranormal Romance: In "Cat and Mouse", Andrea Moffatt begins a romance with Guillaume de Marchaux, who is a cat by day and a man by night. Although Andrea initially believes that they are in love, she later realizes that Guillaume was just using her for sex.
• Parental Favoritism: In "Shelter Skelter", Harry Dobbs openly favors his son Jason over his daughter Deidre. While he spends a great deal of time with Jason in his attempts to turn him into a man, he barely even acknowledges Deidre's existence. When he thinks that a nuclear war is about to break out, he calls his wife Sally and demands that she send Jason home so that he can survive in his new fallout shelter. He makes no mention of Deidre.
• Parental Obliviousness: In "The Uncle Devil Show", Joey's parents are entirely oblivious to him using the spells that he has learned from his Tim Ferret and Friends video to change the world around him, including giving them the heads of a lizard and a wolf.
• Parents Know Their Children: In "The Once and Future King", Gary Pitkin tells Sandra that the real Elvis Presley's mother Gladys could tell that he wasn't her son after he assumed his identity. He believes the knowledge that Elvis was dead is what ultimately killed her.
• Parent with New Paramour: In "Father & Son Game", Michael Stephens hates his father Darius' wife of six years Anita. This is mostly because she is Darius' strongest supporter and her efforts are preventing him from having Darius declared dead after his consciousness is transferred to a Cyborg body.
• Parody Assistance: "A Day in Beaumont" extensively parodies 1950s science fiction films. Four of the guest stars, Warren Stevens, Kenneth Tobey, Jeff Morrow and John Agar, were well known for their roles in such films.
• Passing the Torch:
  • "Paladin of the Lost Hour" features a dying elderly man named Gaspar passing on the titular object (a pocket watch containing the lost hour of the world) to a new bearer, Billy Kinetta.
  • In "The Curious Case of Edgar Witherspoon", the title character explains to Dr. Jeremy Sinclair that the voice that he hears told him that he could retire to Miami. Dr. Sinclair then assumes the duty of keeping the world in balance and preventing disasters by maintaining the contraption in Edgar's apartment.
• Past-Life Memories: In "Memories", everyone has the ability to recall the memories of their past lives. Memories that include past grudges, traumas, and every stressful event they've experienced. Plus, if their current life sucks, they have a chance at a new one.
• People Zoo: In "Children's Zoo", Debbie Cunningham, whose parents Sheila and Martin are constantly fighting and are often emotionally and verbally abusive towards her, receives an invitation to the Children's Zoo. Her parents take her to the zoo, very reluctantly, only to discover that it is a zoo where bad parents are imprisoned after being brought there by their children. Debbie inspects five pairs of parents in locked rooms before deciding on the two that she wants to become her new parents.
• Persecuted Intellectuals: In "Examination Day", the government exterminates anyone who scores too high on a mandatory examination at twelve years old. Dickie Jordan is one such victim.
• Pet's Homage Name: In "Little Boy Lost", the photojournalist Carol Shelton's cat is named Ansel after Ansel Adams.
• Place Worse Than Death: Both "Dealer's Choice" and "I of Newton" make jokes about New Jersey (specifically Newark in the latter case) being like Hell.
• Plagiarism in Fiction: In "Take My Life...Please!", America's "hottest comic" Billy Diamond stole a routine about a gorilla eating a banana peel from a struggling young comedian named Dave, who approached him for advice. He performs it on the Talk Show Larry Gibbon's Hollywood, unaware that Dave is in the studio audience. As he drives away from the studio after the show, Dave pulls a gun on him from the back seat. He is desperate as he has no money and his wife is pregnant. The two men struggle with the gun and both are killed when the car crashes. Diamond finds himself in an Ironic Hell where he is forced to tell an extremely amused audience about all of the terrible things that he has done, including stealing Dave's routine.
• Playing with Fire:
  • In "Gramma", it is mentioned that the title character used her powers to burn down several of her neighbors' houses.
  • In "Dead Run", the demons who guard the condemned in Hell can light cigarettes by pressing them into the palms of their hands.
  • A variation in "The Toys of Caliban". Toby Ross is shown a picture of fire by his father Ernest and is able to start one with his mind as a result of his ability to manifest something after seeing a picture of it. As Ernest intended, the fire burns their house down and kills them both.
• Please Select New City Name: In "A Message from Charity", the village of Annes Town was renamed Anniston in the late 19th Century.
• Plucky Office Girl: In "But Can She Type?", a much-abused secretary named Karen Billings stumbles on a way to switch to a parallel universe where secretaries are treated like supermodels.
• Point of No Return:
  • Frost winding up in 1928 in "The Convict's Piano" was an unintentional variant: after he steps away from the piano when Mickey Shaughnessy takes over, Mickey winds up being sent back to the prison in the present, and after coming face to face with a now elderly Eddie O'Hara, he gets punched (in the face) into the piano, causing it to be knocked over and broken.
  • Near the end of "Extra Innings", due to using the Monty Hanks baseball card, Ed Hamner winds up in a World Series-deciding game that goes to extra innings... meaning he unintentionally winds up blowing off a job interview and dinner with his wife Cindy. As a result, Cindy decides to start burning his baseball collection, Paula showing up just in time to prevent the Monty Hanks card from being burnt... only to wind up tearing it up after realizing he'd have a happier, more fulfilling life as Monty.
• Polluted Wasteland: In "Voices in the Earth", Earth's biosphere was destroyed 1,000 years earlier due to the complete depletion of the ozone layer. Its atmosphere consists predominantly of carbon dioxide with traces of methane and ammonia and appears to be yellow due to the iron oxide created by the many rusted buildings. However, the ghosts of the dead Earth eventually use their collective powers to restore the biosphere and create life in the oceans.
• Poltergeist: In "There Was an Old Woman", the children's author Hallie Parker notices her drapes and a rocking chair moving on their own. As she had heard the sound of children giggling, she concludes that the neighborhood kids were playing a prank on her. Several days later, her living room window is broken by a baseball and she again assumes that it was the local kids. That night, Hallie finds the copy of her book Creatures of the Closet that she signed for Brian Harris in her house. She calls his parents to tell them that someone has stolen his book, only to discover that Brian is dead and the book was buried with him. Hallie eventually realizes that all of this was caused by ghosts when apparitions of Brian and about a dozen other children appear to her.
• Pop-Culture Pun Episode Title:
  • "Tooth and Consequences" is a pun on Truth or Consequences.
  • "Take My Life...Please!" is a reference to Henny Youngman's famous joke "Take my wife...please!"
• Pop-Star Composer: Legendary jam band The Grateful Dead provided the theme music for this iteration of The Twilight Zone alongside jazz keyboardist Merl Saunders, a regular collaborator of Dead frontman Jerry Garcia. The Dead also provided incidental music for several episodes of the show.
• Power Echoes: In "The Trance", Leonard Randall speaks with an echo effect whenever the strange voice takes control of his body.
• The Power of Love:
  • Parodied in "A Day in Beaumont". Dr. Kevin Carlson makes two over the top declarations of love to his girlfriend Faith, assuring her that the aliens can never take that away from them and that it can defeat them.
  • In "Appointment on Route 17", Jamie Adler promised his girlfriend Mary Jo that he would always be with her no matter what. After he is killed in a car accident, his heart is transplanted into Tom Bennett, who is attracted to Mary Jo the moment that he lays eyes on her.
• Prank Date: In "The Trunk", Candy asks the shy, withdrawn Hotel Winchester manager Willy Gardner for a date in front of her boyfriend Danny and his fellow hoodlums Rocco and Cap. Willy is surprised as she barely ever speaks to him but he nevertheless accepts. When he does so, Candy tells him that he'll need to pay her $50. She and the three hoodlums then have a good laugh at Willy's expense.
• Prefers the Illusion: In "Dreams for Sale", Jenny decides to remain in the "Country Picnic" program created by the Dreamatron in which she is happily married to Paul and has two daughters instead of returning to her real life as a worker in a sterile future world. She tells Paul that she wants to stay with him forever. The Dreamatron burns out and she dies with a smile on her face, though her mind seemingly survives in the machine.
• Pretty in Mink: In "Night of the Meek", Mr. Dundee had a fur coat custom made for his wife for Christmas. He is furious when a junior salesman accidentally sells it. Henry Corwin later pulls the coat out of his magic Santa sack and gives it to Dundee.
• Prove I Am Not Bluffing: In "A Small Talent for War", the Soviet ambassador to the United Nations expresses doubt that the aliens have the power to destroy all life on Earth. The alien ambassador tells him to keep watching the skies. Several minutes later, the British ambassador receives a report from the Royal Observatory in Greenwich that Halley's Comet has disappeared, having been destroyed by the aliens.
• Psychic-Assisted Suicide: Implied in "Devil's Alphabet". On November 2, 1897, Andrew hanged himself from a high ceiling in his house. However, there was no chair found in the room so it is a mystery how he reached the rafters. The implication is that he was assisted by the occult forces with which he and the other six members of the Devil's Alphabet Society had unwittingly entered a bargain that transcends death.
• Pun-Based Title:
  • "I of Newton" is a pun on eye of newt, a common ingredient in witches' brews in fiction, and Isaac Newton.
  • "The Misfortune Cookie" is a pun on fortune cookie.
  • "The Leprechaun-Artist" is a pun on Con Artist.

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