History Literature / NeedfulThings

* {{Gaslighting}}: Essentially this is Gaunt's M.O. He does this indirectly to his victims by having others play "pranks" on someone else and blame it on their enemy. This eventually drives his victims to paranoia and anger. Eventually, it causes them to snap and kill the person the prank is pinned on.

* Gaslighting: Essentially this is Gaunt's entire M.O., only he manipulates others into doing it for him. He does this indirectly to his victims by having others play "pranks" on someone else and blame their enemy. This eventually drives his victims to paranoia, anger and then causes them to snap and kill the person the prank is pinned on.

** [[spoiler:In the film, Gaunt is allowed to get away with his crimes completely scot-free. But he doesn't call what he has done in Castle Rock a "rousing success" thanks to Pangborn managing to calm everyone down and Dan blowing up Gaunt's store. Unlike the book, while there are a few explosions and considerable property damage, most of the town is still left standing and the body count is less. Pangborn and Polly also immediately reconcile after Gaunt leaves.]]

* CoolCar: Book Gaunt's Tucker Talisman... which is more than just a car. In the movie it's a black 1958 Mercedes-Benz 300d with no supernatural elements other than the ability to appear and disappear out of thin air. It also does pretty well in a high-speed chase against a more modern police cruiser. It disappears after getting wrecked and blown up and returns as Gaunt's getaway car at the end.

** * [[spoiler:In the film, Gaunt is allowed to get away with his crimes completely scot-free. But he doesn't call what he has done in Castle Rock a "rousing success" thanks to Pangborn calling everyone out and Dan blowing up Gaunt's store. Unlike the book, while there are a few explosions, most of the town is still left standing and the body count is less. Pangborn and Polly also immediately reconcile after Gaunt leaves.]]

* DownerEnding: [[spoiler:The film version is this, due to Gaunt being allowed to get away with his crimes completely scot-free]].

** This is disappointingly subverted in the film, which has Gaunt meet with Pangborn early and even in the climax has no fear at all of him.

* HarmfulToMinors: Eleven year old Brian Rusk plays two [[spoiler:seemingly]] harmless pranks on Wilma Jerzyk [[spoiler:one, throwing mud on her clean sheets; two, throwing rocks at her house with messages rubber banded to them. This results in her and Nettie Cobb killing each other. He hears of their deaths and the role of his pranks in their deaths and the guilt drives him to commit suicide in his garage]] in front of his seven year old brother.

-->'''Gaunt:''' The young carpenter from Nazareth? I knew him well. Promising young man. Died badly.

* AFatherToHisMen: Sheriff Pangborn. Much more pronounced in the book than the movie, though.
* AdaptationalHeroism: Danforth "Buster" Keeton in the books is an unpleasant person through-and-through, even before he goes crazy. He browbeats his wife ([[spoiler:and later murders her]]), bullies skinny Norris Ridgewick and is so rotten that even mild-mannered Sheriff Pangborn finds himself quietly wishing Buster would just die and spare everyone around him his presence. In the movie, however, a lot of this is toned down: his personality is more small-town yokel than pompous prick, he confesses his embezzlement to Alan outright and levels with him as an equal (something book Buster would never do), and in the movie's climax he even turns on Gaunt outright.
* AdaptedOut: Too many to count, but a special mention should be made for John "Ace" Merrill, the villain of earlier King work ''The Body'' (adapted into the film ''Film/StandByMe''). In the book he is a main character, acting as Gaunt's PsychoForHire and the closest thing he has to a [[TheDragon Dragon]], but in the movie he simply never returns to Castle Rock and Gaunt is never given an accomplice at all (he tricks Buster into doing his bidding for a time, but even he turns on Gaunt eventually).

* AStormIsComing: The book's prologue, and stated outright by Gaunt in the movie.

-->“No,” she murmurs, and now her eyes are so wide and so close that he seems almost to drown in them, “you mustn’t, Bri ... it’s wrong ...”
-->“It’s right, baby, ” he says, and presses his lips to hers.
-->She draws away after a few moments and whispers tenderly:
-->“Hey, kid, watch out where the fuck you’re goin!”

* CorruptPolitician: "Buster" Keeton, who started stealing from the town's funds to cover his gambling addiction.

* ConcertKiss: The photo Myra buys gives her realistic visions about Elvis when she touches it. The first one is him pulling her up on stage at a concert and kissing her.
* ConspiracyTheorist: Keeton believes that "Them", a shadowy group of authority figures, is after him. What is actually after him is the Bureau of Taxation, because he's stealing from the town's funds.

* FauxAffablyEvil: Leland Gaunt initially presents himself as a genial and charismatic shopkeeper, if a bit eccentric. As the novel goes on he begins to drop the pleasantries more and more frequently showing he is not only crude and nasty, but a profoundly evil being who plays with and destroys people's lives purely for his own amusement.

* PretenderDiss: When Alan advises Reverend Rose to let the Catholics hold a casino night and not to escalate the conflict any further, Rose brings up UsefulNotes/{{Jesus}} chasing out the moneylenders from the Temple.
-->'''Rose:''' When-uh Jesus saw those evil men and women defiling the house of the Lord-uh, He looked for no line of infringement. Our Lord did what He-uh knew to be right!
-->'''Alan:''' Yes. But you're not Him.

* TooDumbToLive: Frank Jewett, a school principal and pedophile, keeps child pornography ''in his office desk at the schoold.'' It's bad enough that he has those proclivities to begin with, but having a position of trust where he is responsible for children, to keep the evidence at his place of work is a special kind of stupid.

* ChekhovsGun: [[spoiler: The Tastee-Munch Can and the folding flower trick.]]
* ChekhovsHobby: [[spoiler: Sheriff Pangborn's shadow puppet skills come in handy against Gaunt, especially when he creates puppets of Literature/{{Cujo}} and the sparrows from ''Literature/TheDarkHalf'']]

** DownerEnding: [[spoiler:The film version is this, due to Gaunt being allowed to get away with his crimes completely scot-free]].

* LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters: Particularly in the novel. Many of them were AdaptedOut of the movie out of sheer practicality's sake.
** Almost a necessity for a book with a body count this high -- at least [[spoiler: 20]] named characters are dead by the end of the story, with many more deaths implied by the narration.

* DoingInTheWizard: Of a sort in the movie. While Gaunt is practically stated outright to be the devil, very few of his supernatural elements and abilities actually survive the transition between the book and the film. The climax in particular, which is much more epic in the book, is downgraded to Gaunt simply tanking a huge explosion and then arrogantly sauntering to his car.

* DrivenToSuicide: [[spoiler: Brian Rusk, Gaunt's first customer, when he sees that the pranks he did on Gaunt's order indirectly led to the deaths of Wilma and Nettie. Sally Ratcliffe also does herself in. Norris Ridgewick attempts suicide for similar reasons, but [[LetsGetDangerous changes his mind]].]]

* GlamourFailure: [[spoiler:Most of the things that people get from Needful Things are junk, disguised as treasures by an implied magical illusion. The illusion fails sometimes, usually in a MyGodWhatHaveIDone moment or when someone else's treasure is seen.]]

* HumanoidAbomination: Gaunt.

* ImposterForgotOneDetail: In an attempt to get Pangborn into the spiral of murder overtaking the town, Gaunt shows him an illusion of [[spoiler:his wife and son's car being hit by one driven by Ace]]. Pangborn realizes it's a fake when [[spoiler:he realizes they're wearing their seatbelts in the illusion - when they died in real life specifically because they weren't]].

* ItAmusedMe: Gaunt takes souls from those who die as a result of his machinations, but he admits that he's not really doing any of this for the souls; he has plenty of them at this point. He just finds all of this really, really funny.

* KarmaHoudini: Movie Gaunt never gets taken down a peg at all and to the very end is untouchable. While book Gaunt is just as hard to kill, he experiences significantly more retribution and is forced to flee Castle Rock in defeat rather than being allowed to taunt the heroes and then drive out of town like he does in the movie.

* MadeOfIron: Movie Gaunt walks out of an explosion large enough to blow his whole shop to smithereens none the worse for wear. The book version was not nearly so untouchable, experiencing a slow but steady GlamourFailure in the chapters leading up to the climax.

* MutualKill: Several examples.
* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: Several of Gaunt's pawns have this reaction as they manage to break free of his influence. Three of them try to commit suicide. [[spoiler:Two succeed. The third, Deputy Norris Ridgewick, stops himself when he realizes just how badly he was tricked, and takes a level in badass, as seen below, to help stop Gaunt]].
* NervousWreck: Nettie is always tense and jumpy due to the abuse she suffered at the hands of her husband. Keeton also gradually becomes this as paranoia sets in.

* ParentalNeglect: After Cora gets the sunglasses from Mr. Gaunt, she pretty much stops paying attention to her sons. [[spoiler:When Brian commits suicide, she doesn't even realize what happened.]]

* PoisonedWeapons: The bullets from the guns Gaunt sells have some kind of unknown toxin on them, which causes slow and painful death (if the bullet wound itself isn't fatal).

* SouthernGothicSatan: An example where the Tall Dark Stranger explicitly is the Devil or at least a demon. Leland Gaunt shows up in a shop that wasn't there before, and gives the townsfolk of Castle Rock special little things in exchange for pranks. The little pranks eventually set the townsfolk against each other till everything's dead and on fire.

* TooAwesomeToUse: Used in-universe; most people who buy their personal "needful thing" from Gaunt become too obsessed with protecting and guarding it to ever use it in the manner intended. It's implied that this is by design, lest someone else [[GlamourFailure see and point out]] [[spoiler:that their treasure is really junk. Unfortunately, the trope doesn't hold true when Gaunt starts selling guns...]]

* TreasureMap: Ace buys a TreasureMap from Gaunt to his uncle's fortune. At least that's what he thinks.

** How Polly realizes the letter from San Francisco is fake; [[spoiler: it uses Patricia, not Polly, and in San Francisco she never used Patricia even on official documents.]]

* FauxAffablyEvil: Gaunt, in spades. Goes with his being SophisticatedAsHell.

* HenpeckedHusband: Pete Jerzyck, Wilma's husband. The narration states that he wasn't merely afraid of Wilma, "he lived in awe of her, as natives in certain tropical climes once supposedly [[AppeaseTheVolcanoGod lived in awe and superstitious dread of the Great God Thunder Mountain.]]"

* TheNondescript: In the book, essentially nothing about Leland Gaunt's physical appearance is ever revealed, save for his more peculiar features. He seems to be a tall, thin man somewhere in later middle-age based on Brian's initial impression, and later interactions with other characters bear at least this out, but only two things are described in explicit, consistent detail -- his crooked teeth, which "jostle" and overlap in a very wide smile, and his hands; the narration also makes it abundantly clear that his eyes change color to whatever the customer finds most trustworthy, and that he can do it himself at will, so it's more accurate to say that [[PerceptionFilter Leland Gaunt looks like however you expect him to]].

* SanitySlippage: Frank Jewett and Buster Keaton, never the most stable of individuals, are driven totally off the deep end thanks to Gaunt's machinations. Frank actually acknowledges that he has lost his mind, [[CardCarryingVillain and gleefully embraces it.]]

* MeaningfulName: In a work chock-full of references to the works of Creator/HPLovecraft, it's a pretty safe bet that Leland ''Gaunt'' wasn't named at random.

* SeriesFauxnale: The original front cover billed the book as "the last Castle Rock story", but King has brought it back for several stories that were published later.

* CoolCar: Book Gaunt's Tucker Talisman... which is more than just a car. In the movie it's just a black Mercedes with no supernatural elements.

* PleasePutSomeClothesOn: When Cora Rusk angrily storms to Needful Things to see Mr. Gaunt after her visit with the King has been rudely interrupted by the presence of another woman,she doesn't realize that her nightgown is only partially buttoned and showing her privates until Mr. Gaunt points it out to her.

* BeatBag: Ace was tricked into buying baking soda instead of cocaine and got into serious trouble when he tried to resell it to powerful mobsters.