History Series / TheLostRoom

* WellIntentionedExtremist: [[spoilerKreutzfeld, who wants to recreate the Room 9 experiment to bring his son back to life.]]

* AffablyEvil: Kruetzfeld will do anything to get his son back, healthy, including having his men shoot Joe with a shotgun. But when he has to, he negotiates and seems sincere. Kruetzfeld does appear conflicted: he saves Joe from falling to his death (and taking the Key Kruetzfeld needs from Joe's corpse), but [[spoiler: later after Joe saves his life, leaves Joe to a much more painful and prolonged death]].
* AllYourPowersCombined: Knife + Watch = [[spoiler: "A kind of telepathy"]]
** Key + Comb + Watchbox = [[spoiler: Access to an alternative version of Room 9.]]
** Nail Clippers + Pack of Cigarettes + Ashtray + Clock + Key + Toothbrush + Watchbox = [[spoiler:Something Very Bad.]]

* [[ArtifactOfAttraction Artifacts of Attraction]]: The Objects have a... knack... for making people covet them. ''[[GoldFever Murderously]]'' so. Admittedly, some of them ''are'' so powerfully useful that they justify this sort of behavior.

** This could be a similar misrepresentation to how the Scissors "rotate things".

** ChekhovsGun:
*** [[spoiler:Kreutzfeld has sliding doors in every single part of his house, preventing infiltration via The Key. But then Joe sees he bought his son a playhouse for his birthday...]] Also counts as NiceJobFixingItVillain.
*** Wally mentions in the first episode that there's always a price to be paid when using the Objects. Early on it seems that it's just being put in danger for simply having a powerful Object, and Anna being taken by the Room. The whole "price" detail is ignored from that point onwards [[spoiler: until it's picked up by the Occupant himself, at the tail end of the final episode, and [[MeaningfulEcho it's a lot more dire]].]]
* CollectorOfTheStrange: Anyone who associates with the Objects.
** Mostly. Kang and the Sood are scrupulous about collecting information, not the Objects themselves because having an Object could get them killed. Though the Sood does collect signs of the Objects, so he might count anyway.
* CoolKey: The Key can get you into the Room from any door that meets certain lenient qualifications (see CoolGate).

* CursedWithAwesome: Merely possessing an Object will mess up your life. Besides people fighting over the Objects, many of them have terrible side effects, and the possessors tend to become increasingly paranoid and dysfunctional the longer they own one.

* DeFictionalized: [[http://forums.scifi.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=2257173&view=findpost&p=2484633 The Sunshine Motel]].

* DisneyVillainDeath: Averted twice. Kuertzfeld rescues Joe as he dangles from a fire-escape railing. Later, Joe rescues Kuertzfeld as he dangled from a prison guard tower railing.

* GilliganCut: Wally describes the Watch to Joe, and says that it's useless by itself for anything but hard boiling eggs without heat. Cut to Kurtzfeld using it to hard boil an egg for a snack.

* GoldFever: Dr. Ruber's character to a T, just substitute "Magical Key" for "Gold."

* HeartIsAnAwesomePower: The Scissors "rotate things." Joe [[WhatKindOfLamePowerIsHeartAnyway isn't concerned]] when confronting the owner... until she sends him tumbling through the air with a twist of her wrist. No one said the center of rotation had to be inside the object.
** So many Objects fall into this category, it's mind-boggling. The Pencil spawns pennies when you tap the eraser against a solid object; best "get rich" plan ever, if you have the patience. The Bus Pass drops you out of the sky outside of Gallup, NM from ''anywhere in the world'', no tumble lock door required. The Glasses stop combustion, the Flask lets you [[PsychicStrangle Vader choke people]], [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking and the Watch hard-boils eggs.]] Anyone of these can be twisted around ala Manga/DeathNote to achieve some pretty crazy things, even more so when {{synchronization}} is in play.

* JerkWithAHeartOfGold: Most of the "bad guys" are this, but Kuertzfeld in particular seems to truly care about his son, and even Joe. [[spoiler: Although he betrays Joe when it benefits him.]]
** Kuertzfeld lets the Weasel live, although has his men beat him.
** Kuertzfeld tells Jennifer that he'll let her live if she doesn't interfere with him, when killing her (as he's killed others) would make things easier for him.
* JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope: Ruber.
* KnowledgeBroker: There are two of these. Both state that they remain unobtrusive and not obtain the Objects themselves.
** Suzie Kang runs a Pittsburgh dry-cleaning shop, and tracks the unrecovered Objects. She deals with anyone, and charges exorbitant prices. Joe, Ruber, and Kruetzfeld all deal with her.
** The Sood, a bookstore owner in Las Vegas, is introduced later in the mini-series, and appears to work exclusively for Kruetzfeld. He seemingly only tracks Object-related signs, such as [[spoiler: the Object combination that opens the vault]] and [[spoiler: the path that the Objects have traveled]].

* MindRape: Don't look into the Deck Of Cards. It's bad for your health.

** Or women's locker rooms, for that matter...

* MundaneUtility: The Watch hard boils eggs., and when combined with the Knife, gives "a form of telepathy". Despite the latter function, Kurtzfeld uses it to hard boil eggs.

* NecessarilyEvil: The Legion collects Objects via the quickest means necessary - generally theft and making under-the-table deals - to keep them away from the general public and criminal worlds.
** It's worth mentioning that their code forbids killing. Then again, there are times when they were forced to kill out of self defense or desperation.
* NeedleInAStackOfNeedles: Jennifer is seen taking a sledgehammer to a series of nearly-identical radios, because the one she can't destroy is the Object she's looking for.

* NighInvulnerability: [[spoiler: The Occupant is a living Object, and like all other Objects he [[MadeOfIndestructium can't be damaged.]]]]

%%* PiecesOfGod: Maybe.
* PlotSensitiveSnoopingSkills: Much is made of the Objects' potential significance, what might happen if they're destroyed or reunited with the Room, and what happened in the Room. [[spoiler: Despite the Photo and especially the Glass Eye, it's comparatively late in the story before anyone stops and considers whose Room it was.]]
** In an interesting if [[FridgeLogic questionable]] fashion, this is something of an EnforcedTrope. [[spoiler:The Occupant has no desire to be found, and he willfully repelled anybody in possession of an Object, and only the Sood had tracked the Objects' movements long enough for any kind of pattern to be detected. The Wedding Photo and the Polaroid never being shown to anybody else before Joe asked about them definitely helped.]]

%%* PortalDoor: The key can create these.

* ResetButton: How the Room behaves when accessed with the Key. Whenever a tumbler lock is opened with the Key, whatever changes were made to the Room are reset in the following ways: Objects are returned to where and how they were at the time of the Event, and non-Objects are seemingly deleted ([[spoiler:actually moved into another iteration of the Room, of which there's countless combinations]]). This is a big plot point, as Joe's daughter is left inside the Room during one of its resets, and the rest of the miniseries is Joe's attempts to learn how to get her back.

* SequelHook: [[spoiler: At the end of the miniseries, Joe throws the Key into the Room to keep it out of everyone's reach, then drives away with Anna and Jennifer. Only for the camera to pan back to the door to Room 8 (the door Joe used to access the Room) and for the door to open, revealing the Room and the Key inside]]. Almost makes you wish the miniseries went to full series just to see what happens next.
* ShoutOut: Sort of hard to see, but when Joe [[spoiler:discovers proof of the Occupant, he talks to a librarian who says he appeared out of nowhere, claiming to be her husband, and he presented her with a photo of their wedding as proof. Similar to the sequence from ''Film/ItsAWonderfulLife'' when George runs up to Mary in Pottersville, screaming that they're married.]] Shout Out? Maybe...

* {{Synchronization}}: The Objects are presumed to affect probability ''itself'' just to get closer to one another. The one exception being [[spoiler: [[LivingMacGuffin the Occupant]], who happens to have a will of his own, and chooses to]] repel other objects away.
* TragicDream: Poor Kreutzfeld, he just wants to [[spoiler: bring his son back to life by ripping a hole in reality...]]

* {{Uncanceled}}: After five years, the Lost Room is coming back in the form of a comic continuation. Sadly, the product has since been placed on the backburner indefinitely.

* WellIntentionedExtremist: [[spoiler: Kreutzfeld, who wants to recreate the Room 9 experiment to bring his son back to life.]]
* WhatKindOfLamePowerIsHeartAnyway: When the watch isn't with the knife, it can hard boil eggs. Useful if you really like eggs, but not for much else.
** It could also be a ridiculous [[StealthPun stealth]] [[VisualPun visual pun]]. Consider that a watched kettle never boils... does a watched clock?
** Joe has this reaction to the Scissors (they rotate things) when he first hears about them. [[HeartIsAnAwesomePower He learns otherwise.]]
* WhoWantsToLiveForever: [[spoiler: It's implied the Occupant is immortal, and he's not very fond of this.]]

** Inside of the Room itself, time appears to be stopped, with the window always showing what is probably 1:20 PM, the time the Event occured.

* ArsonMurderAndJaywalking: While Wally's not usually judicious about using his ticket, he does seem to use it at least once to stop a bunch of guys from fighting. He then [[SugarWiki/FunnyMoments sends a teenage girl to just outside Gallup because she was mocking his bowling game.]]
* ArtifactCollectionAgency: Several examples.

* ResetButton: How the Room behaves when accessed with the Key. Whenever a tumbler lock is opened with the Key, whatever changes were made to the Room are reset in the following ways: Objects are returned to where and how they were at the time of the Event, and non-Objects are seemingly deleted ([[spoiler: actually moved into another iteration of the Room, of which there's countless combinations]]). This is a big plot point, as Joe's daughter is left inside the Room during one of its resets, and the rest of the miniseries is Joe's attempts to learn how to get her back.

* ParanormalMundaneItem: The Objects are perfectly ordinary-seeming items with bizarre and unintuitive powers, like a comb that can stop time, a canteen that causes everyone nearby except its holder to asphyxiate, and a pair of scissors that forcibly turns whatever they point at around any axis. They were originally entirely mundane items that were part of a man's luggage within the titular room when a mysterious Event transformed them, and they have since been disseminated around the world as people fought over them. The Objects are also indestructible, except when inside the Room itself.