History Recap / TheTwilightZone1959S1E1WhereIsEverybody

* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: Does not have the iconic theme, and does not have Rod Serling strolling onto the screen to introduce the episode. Instead there's a different theme and Serling only provides voiceover narration. This would be true for the entire first season, with the famous theme and Serling's onscreen narration both introduced in Season 2.

* GoMadFromTheIsolation: The TwistEnding was that Mike had been shut in an isolation booth and was finally cracking up from lonliness.

-->'''Rod Serling:''' Up there, up there in the vastness of space, in the void that is the sky, up there is an enemy known as isolation. It sits there in the stars waiting. Waiting with the patience of eons. Forever waiting...in the Twilight Zone.

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* AllJustADream: The man's journey through the deserted town is just a hallucination caused by an experiment to see how an astronaut would deal with the three weeks' isolation required for a journey to the Moon.
* TheAloner: The man finds himself all alone...

* {{Bathos}}: Towards the end of the episode, the man begins to freak out in the movie theater, and at one point rushes towards the camera... and runs face first into the mirror that was reflecting this scene.
* BeingWatched: What the man is feeling as he searches the empty town.

* DreamEmergencyExit: The man's episode-long wandering drives him half-mad and he races through the streets until he comes upon a "walk" button and desperately pushes it over and over, begging for help. The button is revealed to be the panic button inside the isolation chamber.
* DutchAngle: Used throughout the final sequence in which the man flees in terror from the movie theater into the town square.

* {{Foreshadowing}}: When he finds himself in a diner, the man accidentally knocks over a clock and the glass breaks. Later, he breaks the clock inside the small box where he's confined.

* GoMadFromTheIsolation: The TwistEnding was that the man had been shut in an isolation booth and was finally cracking.

* InTheDreamingStageOfGrief: Unable to find any signs of life in the empty town, the man believes he must be dreaming and tells himself to wake up. When it fails, he desperately asks the "nightmare" to at least give him somebody to talk to.

* QuestForIdentity: The man isn't sure himself of who he is for part of it. He does seem to vaguely recognize his own reflection however. Though he eventually recalls being in the U.S. Air Force.

* TitleDrop: The man shouts out the title of the episode in frustration when he can't find any people around.

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Night falls, and the man, having amused himself by playing Tic-Tac-Toe in the dirt, is surprised when the city's lights come on. He notices a movie theatre playing a war movie, ''Battle Hymn''. Investigating, he sees the movie's poster, and is suddenly struck with remembrance: he's in the Air Force. Happily, he runs inside, shouting this revelation, but finds no one. Sighing, he sits down, concluding that a bomb must have dropped, but quickly finds the flaws in his logic.

->'''Creator/RodSerling''': The place is here, the time is now, and the journey into the shadows that we are about to watch, could be ''our'' journey.

-->'''Rod Serling''': Up there, up there in the vastness of space, in the void that is the sky, up there is an enemy known as isolation. It sits there in the stars waiting. Waiting with the patience of eons. Forever waiting...in the Twilight Zone.

* QuestForIdentity: The man isn't sure himself of who he is for part of it. He does seem to vaguely recognize his own reflection. Though he eventually recalls being in the U.S. Air Force.