History Series / TheTwilightZone1959

* DrinkOrder: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E83DeadMansShoes Dead Man's Shoes]]", after trying and failing to convince his girlfriend Wilma of his identity several times, the homeless man Nate Bledsoe is finally recognized as the gangster Dane by his order of "tequila...with a cube of sugar." He later uses the order to gain Bernie Dagget's attention at their nightclub.

** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E83DeadMansShoes Dead Man's Shoes]]", Dane and Bernie Dagget were gangsters who were partners in the running of a nightclub. When Dagget offered to buy him out, Dane refused. Dagget was unwilling to accept this and had him murdered so that he can take over the club.

* BarredFromTheAfterlife: Hyder Simpson in "The Hunt" does this to himself. He's allowed into what appears to be heaven, but he isn't allowed to take his dog Rip with him. He decides that an afterlife without his dog is a fate worse than death (so to speak), so he refuses to enter and will just wander the path in between heaven & hell forever. Subverted when the angel comes to bring him to Heaven after the gatekeeper (of Hell) turned him away. The angel mentions that while some people walk into Hell with both eyes open, the Devil can't fool a dog, who warned his master of the danger. Turns out that a life without his trusty dog wasn't heaven, it was hell. Heaven allows dogs in.

* EvilDetectingDog: "The Hunt". An agent of the Devil is trying to lure a recently-deceased Hyder Simpson into entering Hell. Hyder's dog Rip growls, warning him not to enter, and he avoids the trap. Later, an angel remarks "...a man, well, he'll walk right into Hell with both eyes open. But not even the Devil can fool a dog!"

** Episode "Dead Man's Shoes". When Wilma loses control over not knowing what's going on, Dane (in Nathan's body) slaps her to calm her down.

* GodIsGood: In "The Hunt", though unseen, the Christian God takes multiple measures to help the deceased along; even offering nonchristians a test of morality to keep them out of the devil's clutches. Heaven isn't just a fluffy place with hymns in the clouds, but a paradise for everyone as it takes the form of a beautiful back-country with coon hunts and square dances for a deceased woodsmen. And yes, dogs are more than welcome into Heaven.

%%* HellOfAHeaven: "The Hunt" [[PlayingWithATrope plays with]] this trope.

** In "Dead Man's Shoes", the homeless man who put on the dead mobster's shoes [[spoiler:and was taken over by his spirit to avenge his death is shot and killed - and another homeless man finds his body and puts on the shoes]].

** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E84TheHunt The Hunt]]", Hyder Simpson's dog is named Rip, as in RIP. This [[{{Foreshadowing}} foreshadows]] the fact that the two of them have been DeadAllAlong.

* SecretTest:
** Episode "The Hunt". A man and his dog both drown. They then find themselves walking down a path. At one point, they meet a man who says that they've reached Heaven, but dogs aren't allowed. The dog's owner says any Heaven that doesn't allow his dog can count him out. Further down the road, he found it was a test, as an actual angel tells him the previous man was Satan and the place he wanted the dog's owner to enter was Hell. The angel warmly invites the man and his dog into the real Heaven.
** Episode "Valley of the Shadow". A [[IntrepidReporter newspaper reporter]] learns too much and is taken prisoner by the inhabitants of the title valley. An attractive woman sets him free and he takes advantage of this to steal their secrets, killing several of them in the process. After he escapes with the girl, she turns on him, revealing that the whole set-up was a test of his worthiness to know the information. He failed.

* JunglesSoundLikeKookaburras: "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E77TheJungle The Jungle]]" takes place in the African jungle, yet the kookaburra sound pops up.

* JustFollowingOrders: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E74DeathsHeadRevisited Deaths-Head Revisited]]", Gunter Lütze claims that he simply functioned as he was told in abusing and torturing the prisoners at Dachau but his flashbacks indicate that he [[PsychoHire revelled in carrying out his orders]]. Becker describes this defense as "the Nazi theme music at Nuremberg."

** In "One for the Angels", Lou Bookman tries to outsmart Death by asking for time enough to put together a truly great sales pitch - "[[TitleDrop one for the angels]]" - before he dies, then declaring his retirement from the sales profession. Death tells him that he's taking someone's life tonight, and if it isn't Bookman, it will be a gravely ill young girl who lives on the street on which Bookman peddles his wares.

** In "One For The Angels", Mr. Death suddenly looks up at the camera as Serling identifies him in his opening narration.

* ChessWithDeath: The climax of "One for the Angels". Lou Bookman convinces Death to let him make one last pitch before he takes him, [[TitleDrop one for the angels]]. He then decides to [[LoopholeAbuse retire]]... at least until Death decides to [[BalancingDeathsBooks go after a little girl]]. As such, to make sure he misses his appointment, Lou decides to distract him by making a big pitch, ultimately selling him all of his wares. [[HeroicSacrifice Thus making his big pitch...]]

** Death in "Nothing in the Dark". He takes the form of Harold Beldon, a young cop who is injured outside of reclusive elderly woman Wanda Dunn in order to show her that dying is nothing to be afraid of.
** "One for the Angels". Although he is insistent on taking Lou (and then a little girl [[BalancingDeathsBooks when Lou refuses to go]]), he's simply just doing his job. In fact, it's implied that he ''deliberately'' bought into Lou's big pitch in order to spare the girl. He even lets Lou know that yes, he ''is'' in fact going to Heaven.

** "Nothing in the Dark" features elderly shut-in Wanda Dunn, who lives in fear that Death will take her if she leaves her basement apartment. A policeman named Harold Beldon (played by a young Creator/RobertRedford) is shot during an altercation outside her door, and she eventually agrees to let him in. [[spoiler:He is revealed to be a gentle, well-meaning version of TheGrimReaper, sent to show her that death is nothing to be afraid of, and they leave together.]]

* EvilCannotComprehendGood: Mr. Radin in "One More Pallbearer" sets up a fake bomb scare scenario and expects three people who once humiliated him in the past to make them apologize to him, and he seems mystified that they would rather spend their last moments with their loved ones than try to save themselves.

%%* TheGrimReaper: "One for the Angels", "Nothing in the Dark" (played by Creator/RobertRedford!), "[[spoiler:The Hitch-Hiker]]".

** "One for the Angels". Death comes for pitchman (street salesman) Lou Bookman, but Lou doesn't want to go and argues with him. Death finally agrees to postpone Lou's departure until he makes "a pitch for the angels". Lou then says that he's going to give up being a pitchman and never make the pitch again, allowing him to literally cheat Death.
** "Nothing in the Dark". Many years ago, Wanda Dunn saw Death kill a woman just by touching her. Ever since she has hidden inside her apartment, refusing to come out in fear of the same thing happening to her. One day she reluctantly allows a wounded police officer inside. She eventually learns that he is Death, finally come for her. She initially refuses to go, but he eventually convinces her to take his hand and pass on.

%%* SleptThroughTheApocalypse: "Time Enough at Last," subverted in "One More Pallbearer".

** In "One for the Angels", a sidewalk pitchman is scheduled to die at midnight. When he tricks Death into not taking him, a young girl is scheduled to die in his place at that time. He must make his best pitch ever to distract Death from taking her.

* AdaptationalAlternateEnding: "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E76StillValley Still Valley]]" ends with Rod Serling noting that Sgt. Joseph Paradine and the other members of his troop were moved to Gettysburg with the implication being that they will be killed in the battle. In the short story "The Valley Was Still", Paradine survives [[UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar the war]] and repeatedly claims in his old age that the cause of the Confederacy was lost not at Antietam or Gettysburg but at the titular valley hamlet of Channow.

* DiesDifferentlyInAdaptation: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E76StillValley Still Valley]]", Teague dies off-screen of natural causes. In the short story "The Valley Was Still", Sgt. Joseph Paradine decapitates him with his saber after he suggests using the book of BlackMagic to defeat the Union.

** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E80AQualityOfMercy A Quality of Mercy]]", the United States forces are depicting trying to recapture Corregidor on August 6, 1945, the day that [[UsefulNotes/AtomicBombingsOfHiroshimaAndNagasaki the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima]]. In reality, Corregidor was recaptured on February 26, 1945.

* HumanLadder: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E79FiveCharactersInSearchOfAnExit Five Characters in Search of an Exit]]", the title characters form one in an attempt to escape from the large metal cylinder in which they are trapped. However, the ballerina is unable to reach the top as they are still several inches too short. The major then fashions a grappling hook from his sword and strips of clothing. He, the clown, the hobo and the bagpiper form another human ladder and he manages to reach the top. [[spoiler: It is then revealed that the five of them are nothing more than dolls in a collection barrel.]]

* ManlyTears: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E79FiveCharactersInSearchOfAnExit Five Characters in Search of an Exit]]", major begins to cry after his numerous attempts to escape the strange room fail. He is also no closer to figuring out what is going on. The ballet dancer comforts him.

** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E79FiveCharactersInSearchOfAnExit Five Characters in Search of an Exit]]", an army major, a ballerina, a clown, a hobo and a bagpiper find themselves trapped in a large cylinder with no memory of who they are or how they got there. [[spoiler: The final scene reveals that the five of them are dolls in a donation barrel for a girls' orphanage.]]

** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E79FiveCharactersInSearchOfAnExit Five Characters in Search of an Exit]]", a man dressed in the uniform of a US Army major wakes up a strange metal cylinder without no memory of who he is or how he got there. He discovers that four others, a clown, a ballet dancer, a hobo and a bagpiper, are in the same boat. [[spoiler: It turns out that they are dolls in a Christmas collection barrel for a girls' orphanage.]]

* CannotTellFictionFromReality: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E26Execution Execution]]", the temporally displaced Joe Caswell mistakes a scene from a [[TheWestern TV Western]] for reality. When the TV cowboy pulls his gun, Caswell shoots the television.

** Carling, the villain of "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E14ThirdFromTheSun Third from the Sun]]", does not appear in the short story by Creator/RichardMatheson on which the episode is based.
** Teenya, the female Martian to whom Sam Conrad is attracted in "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E25PeopleAreAlikeAllOver People Are Alike All Over]]", does not appear in the short story "Brothers Beyond the Void" by Paul W. Fairman on which the episode is based.

* DreamPeople: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E62ShadowPlay Shadow Play]]", several of the people in Adam Grant's DeathRow nightmare are drawn from his real life. For instance, the priest who visits him before his execution is Father Beaman, an actual priest who died when he was ten years old, and the newspaper editor Paul Carson is the younger priest who replaced him. Adam is uncertain where he got the District Attorney Henry Ritchie, speculating that he may have been a teacher or a friend of his father's. Outside of his own life, he got his [[CaptivityHarmonica harmonica playing fellow prisoner]] Coley from a bad movie that he once saw.

%%* HumanLadder: "Five Characters in Search of an Exit."

* ThousandYardStare: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E68TheShelter The Shelter]]", Dr. Bill Stockton exhibits one after he emerges from the shelter, having seen and heard everything going on with the people that he considered friends for twenty years.

* UnbuiltTrope: The episode "Five Characters in Search of an Exit" milked the concept of [[spoiler: sentient toys]] for all its inherent horror and existential angst about three decades before [[spoiler: ''WesternAnimation/ToyStory'']] made the idea famous. The ending, where we find out that [[spoiler: the titular five characters are actually dolls dumped in a Salvation Army bin by their owner,]] is absolutely ''terrifying''.

* YouAllMeetInACell: The premise of the episode called "Five Characters in Search of an Exit": An Army major wakes up to find himself trapped inside in a large metal cylinder, along with a hobo, a ballet dancer, a bagpiper, and a clown. None of them have any memory of who they are or how they got there.

%%* YouWakeUpInARoom: "Stopover in a Quiet Town".

** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E77TheJungle The Jungle]]", the Kekouyu put a curse on Alan Richards using a form of black magic known as Umchawi in revenge for his company building a hydroelectric dam that will result in the loss of their homes. It first manifests in the form of a dead goat being dumped outside of his apartment. In the early hours of the following morning, Richards is haunted by sounds of the jungle and tribal drums in the street. When he returns home, he finds that his wife Doris has been killed by a lion, who then pounces on him.

* ActorAllusion: Half of "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E78OnceUponATime Once Upon a Time]]" is [[{{Retraux}} shot in the style]] of a SilentMovie as a tribute to Creator/BusterKeaton, who plays the protagonist Woodrow Mulligan. More specifically, the chase sequence after Mulligan arrives in 1962 recreates a scene from Keatin's 1920 short film ''Film/TheGarage'' co-starring Creator/FattyArbuckle. In both, Keaton's character's loses his trousers and is about to be arrested for public indecency. However, his heavyset partner prevents this when he walks behind him to hide him from a policeman. He then helps him to get a new pair, which Keaton puts on after being lifted up while they are walking.

* ScreamDiscretionShot: In the final scene of "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E77TheJungle The Jungle]]", the lion leaps towards Richards. His screams are heard as the episode ends.

** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E76StillValley Still Valley]]", Dauger says that he went to war as if he were playing a children's game but the experience of fighting has shown him the realities of war. His only desire to remain alive and he even suggests surrendering to the Union troops. Sgt. Joseph Paradine slaps im across the face in response.

* WhatYouAreInTheDark: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E76StillValley Still Valley]]", out of all the Confederates, Sgt. Joseph Paradine is the only one to realize that it's better to go off to war and lose than win by BlackMagic that would tarnish their souls. He believes if is the Confederacy is going to be buried, it should be in hallowed ground.

** {{Subverted|Trope}} in "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E78OnceUponATime Once Upon a Time]]". Rollo, a scientist from 1962, goes back to 1890 with Woodrow Mulligan expecting simpler times, only to realize that they also didn't have the simple pleasures of his time, so Mulligan sends him back to his own time.

* LuckyRabbitsFoot: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E43NickOfTime Nick of Time]]", Don Carter carries one with him at all times, as well as a FourLeafClover.

* MagicalSeventhSon: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E76StillValley Still Valley]]", the Confederate soldier Sgt. Joseph Paradine met an old man named Teague who had magical powers because he was the seventh son of a seventh son. He also made a DealWithTheDevil to use BlackMagic.

** In "The New Exhibit," a passionate (and slightly unhinged) man named Martin Senescu takes care of wax figures of famous killers in his basement after the wax museum where he works closes down. He firmly believes that they're alive, which disturbs his wife, brother-in-law, and former boss. All three end up being killed, apparently by the figures--but the ending suggests that it was actually ''Senescu'' committing the murders, and simply imagining the figures did it as a coping mechanism. It's not clear which is true.

* SuspectExistenceFailure: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E62ShadowPlay Shadow Play]]", Adam Grant is on DeathRow trying to convince people that the world is a nightmare he keeps having, [[GroundhogDayLoop night after night, over and over again]]. The Warden is finally convinced he must be insane, and calls the Governor to ask for a stay. The stay comes too late, the electric chair is fired up, and we find he was right: everyone else dies, and his nightmare starts all over again.

** "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E5WalkingDistance Walking Distance]]", "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E22TheMonstersAreDueOnMapleStreet The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street]]", "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E27TheBigTallWish The Big Tall Wish]]", "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E34TheAfterHours The After Hours]]", "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E54TheOdysseyOfFlight33 The Odyssey of Flight 33]]", "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E64WillTheRealMartianPleaseStandUp Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?]]", "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E74DeathsHeadRevisited Deaths-Head Revisited]]" and "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E75TheMidnightSun The Midnight Sun]]" were all adapted as graphic novels by Walker Paperback from 2008 to 2010.

** "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E34TheAfterHours The After Hours]]" was adapted as a graphic novel by Mark Kneece and Rebekah Isaacs in 2008.

%%* GuineaPigFamily: "Mute".

* DoesNotLikeShoes: Norma in "The Midnight Sun" is barefoot for the entire episode. {{Justified}} because the story's premise is the Earth heating up as it moves closer to the sun.

* EnclosedExtraterrestrials: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E51TheInvaders The Invaders]]", a woman living alone on a farm is menaced by two small aliens in form-concealing armor. [[spoiler:At the end of the episode we learn that the 'aliens' are actually human astronauts and the woman is a giant alien]]

* EngineeredPublicConfession: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E65TheObsoleteMan The Obsolete Man]]", Romney Wordsworth, who has been convicted of owning books and believing in God, chooses a televised execution with his own personal assassin. At the eleventh hour, he summons the Chancellor into his room, where he plans to destroy himself and the Chancellor by suicide bombing. Wordsworth calmly reads passasges from the Bible, and the Chancellor begs to be let go "in the name of God". Wordsworth relents, dying by suicide bombing, and releases the Chancellor. When the Chancellor leaves Wordsworth's room, he is put on trial and declared obsolete for the crime of invoking God's name in an authoritarian dictatorship whose totalitarian, atheistic government has decreed that God does not exist.

** "The Midnight Sun" does a rather cruel one. Over the course of the episode, [[ApocalypseHow the Earth is getting closer and closer to the Sun, and everyone is pretty much doomed.]] But wait, [[spoiler: it's AllJustADream! The Earth isn't moving closer to the Sun, and no one is going to roast to death. The bad news: the Earth is actually moving ''away'' from the Sun, and everyone will freeze to death in total darkness instead.]]

** "Deaths-Head Revisited" features SS captain Gunther Lutze, former commandant at the Dachau concentration camp, returning to the camp to reminisce. [[spoiler:The ghosts of the Jewish inmates whose deaths he ordered appear and force him to mentally experience the torture and agony to which he subjected them, and he is driven insane in a matter of hours and is taken away to an asylum.]]

* ReplacementScrappy: In-Universe example with "I Sing The Body Electric." A widowed husband gets a robot granny to help raise his children, but the oldest child rejects her for not being her deceased mother.

* ABirthdayNotABreak: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E68TheShelter The Shelter]]", Dr. Bill Stockton's birthday party turns into a mad scramble for survival when a nuclear alert is announced--and Bill's fallout shelter has only enough room for himself and his family.

** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E73ItsAGoodLife It's Still a Good Life]]", Anthony Fremont has seemingly unlimited mental powers. His {{Telepathy}} allows him to ensure that everyone in Peaksville thinks nice thoughts about him. If they don't, Anthony uses his powers to punish them. He typically does so by sending them to the cornfield but he also [[PlayingWithFire set Teddy Reynolds on fire]] and turned Dan Hollis into a jack-in-the-box. Anthony can also kill with his mind, which he does to a three-headed gopher that he created. The largest scale demonstration of his power was when he made the world outside of Peaksville disappear. The townspeople were never sure whether the world had been destroyed or whether Peaksville had been transported somewhere else.

* WellIntentionedExtremist: According to Billy Mumy (who played him), Anthony from "It's A Good Life" is honestly trying to make the world a better place, he simply doesn't grasp that what makes ''him'' happy isn't best for everyone. In short, his immaturity prevents him from taking other's views into consideration. This is explored further in the short story on which the episode is based. A notable example excluded from the episode is his reanimating a man's corpse after hearing his widow mourn his death, much to her (and everybody else's) horror. The town folk mostly try to avoid any negative thoughts at all after that, because Anthony might make things so much worse by trying to make them better.

* DreamPeople: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E62ShadowPlay Shadow Play]]", several of the people in Adam Grant's DeathRow nightmare are drawn from his real life. For instance, the priest who visits him before his execution is Father Beaman, an actual priest who died when he was ten years old, and the newspaper editor Paul Carson is the younger priest who replaed him. Adam is uncertain where he got the District Attorney Henry Ritchie, speculating that he may have been a teacher or a friend of his father's. Outside of his own life, he got his [[CaptivityHarmonica harmonica playing fellow prisoner]] Coley from a bad movie that he once saw.

* NoCelebritiesWereHarmed: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E71TheMirror The Mirror]]", Ramos Clemente is a not-so-subtle {{Expy}} of UsefulNotes/FidelCastro, while Tabal's appearance is clearly based on that of UsefulNotes/CheGuevara. The entire episode, which was made between the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Cuban Missile Crisis, is one long TakeThat at Castro. In his closing narration, Rod Serling even says that "any resemblance to tyrants living or dead is hardly coincidental." Funnily enough, General De Cruz mentions both Castro and his predecessor General Fulgencio Batista, the former right-wing dictator of UsefulNotes/{{Cuba}} on whom De Cruz himself is based, in the first scene.

* NotSoDifferent: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E71TheMirror The Mirror]]", it becomes apparent throughout the episode that there is little difference between the revolutionary Ramos Clemente and General De Cruz, the previous dictator whom he overthrew. De Cruz himself realizes this when he is brought before Clemente, who has just seized power.

* OurGhostsAreDifferent: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E70AGameOfPool A Game of Pool]]", Fats Brown comes down from the afterlife as soon as Jesse inadvertently challenges him to a pool game. Jesse beats Fats and, after he dies, he has to return to Earth every time that he is challenged, having become trapped in a kind of IronicHell.

%%* TheCaligula: The main character of "The Mirror".

* CueTheBilliardShot: The episode "A Game of Pool" starts with one of these. The camera follows the ball's trajectory, then focuses on Jesse Cardiff's reaction to it.

** 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 he could play a game against him to settle the question once and for all. When Brown's ghost appears and Cardiff defeats him, his "reward" is to spend the afterlife as Brown had previously done, defending his "greatest" title against people who wish they could play a game against him to settle the question of whether or not they really are better than he was.
** In "A Nice Place to Visit", Rocky Valentine is a small-time crook shot dead by a policeman after a robbery, but in the afterlife, he finds his every desire catered to with no effort whatever, and he wins every game he plays, and assumes he has gone to Heaven. However, he soon grows bored of endless effortless victory, and asks Pip, the spirit guide who greeted him in the afterlife, if he can go to "the other place" for a while. Pip menacingly informs him that he's ''in'' "the other place", and will spend eternity being driven insane by getting everything he wants without trying.

** Jack Klugman and Jonathan Winters are the only credited actors to appear in "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E70AGameOfPool A Game of Pool]]".

* NoChallengeEqualsNoSatisfaction: In the episode "A Nice Place to Visit", an inveterate criminal dies and goes to the afterlife: a pleasant place where he gets everything he wants and all his gambles always pay off. He becomes dissatisfied and asks to be sent to [[{{Hell}} The Other Place]], saying he doesn't belong in Heaven. The reply he gets: [[spoiler:"[[ThisIsntHeaven Whatever gave you the idea you were in Heaven]], Mr. Valentine? [[WhamLine This]] ''[[WhamLine is]]'' [[WhamLine the other place!]]"]]

* NotSoDifferent: Between the Central American dictator and Ramos Clemente in "The Mirror".

** "A Game of Pool" throughly [[DeconstructedTrope deconstructs]] this trope. Jesse Cardiff, a pool shark praised as the best living player, complains that no matter what he does, he'll never be as good as "Fats" Brown, a deceased legend. Fats arrives from the afterlife to play a game which will determine which of them is truly the best. As they do, they discuss what it means to excel at something--Fats points out that while he's only a pool player, he's the ''greatest'' pool player, which allows him pride. The ending, though, reveals that whoever holds that title is forced to spend his or her entire afterlife defending it from those who want to try for it, until someone else defeats the champ. Serling sums it up when he remarks that "being the best of anything carries with it a special obligation to keep on proving it."

* PublicExecution: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E65TheObsoleteMan The Obsolete Man]]", Romney Wordsworth uses the opportunity provided by his televised execution for being obsolete to demonstrate that [[spoiler: the Chancellor is nothing more than a DirtyCoward by trapping him in his room until just before the bomb explodes]]. The Chancellor also mentions that the executions of 1,300 people in six hours were shown on television the previous year.

* SecondPlaceIsForWinners: Invoked in the ending of "A Game of Pool", alongside BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor. Yeah, Jesse Cardiff defeated the legendary Fats Brown and is the best pool player ever. What prize does he get? [[spoiler: [[AndIMustScream Spending eternity defending his pool title until he loses.]]]]

* ThisIsntHeaven: When petty crook Rocky Valentine goes to the afterlife in "A Nice Place to Visit", he finds his every desire fulfilled with minimal effort, and assumes he has gone to Heaven. Before long, getting everything so easily starts to drive him insane, and he begs to go to "the other place"... only to be told he's already there.

* YouNeverAsked: "A Nice Place to Visit". Rocky automatically assumed he was in Heaven and Pip was an angel. Pip chuckles, essentially, "Whatever gave you ''that'' idea?"

* ImmuneToBullets: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E69ThePassersby The Passersby]]", the Union soldier that Lavinia shoots suffers no ill effects from the bullet [[spoiler: as he is already dead]].

* ABirthdayNotABreak: In "The Shelter", a suburban doctor's birthday party turns into a mad scramble for survival when a nuclear alert is announced--and the doctor's fallout shelter has only enough room for himself and his family.

* EmptyPilesOfClothing: The fate of two characters in "Long Live Walter Jameson" and "Queen of the Nile".

** In "The Shelter", a doctor's friendly neighbors turn into a hostile mob when an alert goes out to get to their shelters, and he's the only one on the block who has one.

* PurgatoryAndLimbo: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E32APassageForTrumpet A Passage for Trumpet]]", after the drunken Joey Crown deliberately steps off the curb as [[DrivenToSuicide part of a suicide attempt]], he is hit by a truck and enters a limbo state between life and death.

* RippedFromTheHeadlines: c was inspired by the story of the ''Lady Be Good'', a World War II bomber which crashed in the Libyan desert on April 4, 1943, but was rediscovered in 1958, only two years before this episode aired. The missing crew likewise refers to the missing crew of the ''Lady Be Good'', who were later discovered to have perished trekking across the desert under the mistaken belief they were near the Mediterranean Sea, instead of over 400 miles inland. Finally, the date on Sgt. William F. Kline's grave is April 5, 1943, the day after that the ''Lady Be Good'' vanished.

* RuinsOfTheModernAge: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E66Two Two]]", the man and woman are the first people to set foot in the ruined city since the war that devastated the world five years earlier. They discover the skeletal remains of several people and even two birds that someone kept as pets. However, considering that Rod Serling's opening narration raises the possibility that this all happened two million years ago, it may not actually be the modern age.

* UrbanRuins: "Time Enough At Last" ends in this setting, since the world was destoyed by nuclear war.

* WarIsHell: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E66Two Two]]", this is the man's opinion on the conflict that devastated the world five years earlier. He no longer has any urge or any reason to fight.

* AdamAndEvePlot: [[spoiler:"Two", and more literally "Probe 7 - Over and Out".]]

* AnachronismStew: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZone1959S1E3MrDentonOnDoomsday Mr. Denton on Doomsday]]", the town bully Dan Hotaling forces the alcoholic Al Denton to sing "How Dry I Am" for a drink. The episode is set in the Old West, but the song as we know it probably didn't come into existence until around 1919 or so.

** "Probe 7 - Over and Out". Two humanoid space travelers from different races, a man and a woman, are stranded on a planet. After they meet, they have to learn how to communicate with each other.
** "Two". Two soldiers who survived an apocalyptic war, a man and a woman, are wandering in a deserted city. They don't speak the same language. After they meet, they have to learn how to communicate.

%%* WarIsHell - "Two".

* WorthlessYellowRocks: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E60TheRipVanWinkleCaper The Rip Van Winkle Caper]]", Farwell is the last survivor of the four criminals who stole £1 million in gold bars and placed themselves in suspended animation for 100 years. Dying of dehydration in Death Valley, he offers all of his gold to a passing motorist named George in exchange for water. He dies before George can do anything to help him. [[spoiler: George is surprised that he offered him gold as if it were really worth something since a way to manufacture it was developed decades earlier. As he and his wife drive away, he throws the worthless bar of gold to the ground.]]
* WouldHitAGirl: The Man in "Two" gets into a fistfight with an enemy soldier, who is a woman, and knocks her out.

* MyGrandsonMyself: In "Queen of the Nile", Pamela Morris lives with the elderly Mrs. Viola Draper, ostensibly her mother. She is actually [[spoiler: Pamela's daughter and Pamela is hundreds of years old, heavily implied to have been Cleopatra.]]

* AliensLoveShakespeare: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E64WillTheRealMartianPleaseStandUp Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?]]", [[spoiler: Ross]] finds the taste of cigarettes wonderful and says that they have nothing like them on UsefulNotes/{{Mars}}. [[spoiler: He and the Venusian Haley both have a taste for human music.]]

** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E65TheObsoleteMan The Obsolete Man]]", the State is based on various totalitarian regimes. The Chancellor himself says that the State had predecessors who had the right idea such as UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler and UsefulNotes/JosefStalin but they did not go far enough in eliminating the undesirables such as the elderly, the sick, the maimed and the deformed.

* BizarreAlienBiology: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E55MrDingleTheStrong Mr. Dingle, the Strong]]", the Martian scientist has two heads while the Venusians have antennae.

* TheButlerDidIt: In "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?", a group of people get off a bus and gather at a cafe where they are served food and drinks by the local counter jerk and dine. It is later revealed by the police that one of the people on the bus seems to have been an alien. TenLittleMurderVictims ensues, the resolution of which is only a half-subversion of TheButlerDidIt: [[spoiler:one of the people from the bus ''was'' The Mole, but the cafe worker who served them all and remained very much in the background throughout the story was also an enemy alien from a different planet, and was two steps ahead of The Mole the whole time.]]

* TheCuckoolanderWasRight: [[spoiler:In "Will The Real Martian Please Stand Up?", the old man (played by Jack Elam) accuses Mr. Ross of being the "most suspicious of the bunch". Jack Elam's character also suggests that they check under Ross's coat for wings. Had they done so, they would have seen his third arm and known he was the real Martian.]]
* CueTheBilliardShot: The episode "A Game of Pool" starts with one of these. The camera follows the ball's trajectory, then focuses on Jack Klugman's character's reaction to it.
* CulturePolice: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E137Number12LooksJustLikeYou Number 12 Looks Just Like You]]", the works of Creator/WilliamShakespeare, Creator/JohnKeats, Creator/PercyByssheShelley, Creator/{{Aristotle}}, Creator/{{Socrates}} and Creator/FyodorDostoevsky were all banned many years earlier as their ideas were considered subversive. Professor Sigmund Friend accuses Marilyn of introducing smut to the interview when she mentions that she has read them.

* EngineeredPublicConfession: Romney Wordsworth in "The Obsolete Man", who has been convicted of owning books and believing in God, chooses a televised execution with his own personal assassin. At the eleventh hour, he summons the Chancellor into his room, where he plans to destroy himself and the Chancellor by suicide bombing. Wordsworth calmly reads passasges from the Bible, and the Chancellor begs to be let go "in the name of God". Wordsworth relents, dying by suicide bombing, and releases the Chancellor. When the Chancellor leaves Wordsworth's room, he is put on trial and declared obsolete for the crime of invoking God's name in an authoritarian dictatorship whose totalitarian, atheistic government has decreed that God does not exist.

** The [[spoiler:Chancellor]] in "The Obsolete Man", having sentenced librarian Romney Wordsworth to death for being obsolete, is lured into a trap wherein [[spoiler:Wordsworth locks him in his apartment with the time bomb he has chosen as his method of execution. The state will not rescue the Chancellor for fear of losing face, and eventually, in front of the television audience Wordsworth has requested be witness to his execution, the panicked Chancellor begs to be set free in the name of the God the state denies even exists. His cowardice causes him to be sentenced to death as obsolete]].

** Wordsworth does this to the Chancellor a couple of times in the penultimate scene of "The Obsolete Man":

** "The Obsolete Man" is filled to the brim with ham...and some interpretative dance towards the end.

* ANaziByAnyOtherName: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E42TheEyeOfTheBeholder Eye of the Beholder]]", the Leader is based on UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler. In his speech, he continually stresses the importance of ensuring "glorious conformity" and abiding by a single norm. He says that all that is different must be cut out like a cancerous filth as differences weaken the state.

** In "The Obsolete Man", Romney Wordsworth, the librarian (also played by Burgess Meredith) is considered obsolete, as books have been banned.

* RuleOfThree: In "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up", said Martian has three arms. [[spoiler: The Venusian has three eyes.]]

** "The Obsolete Man". When the prosecutor asks Mr. Wordsworth when he wants to be executed, Wordsworth picks the traditional time: midnight.

** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E20Elegy Elegy]]", the caretaker of the cemetery asteroid Happy Glades and the most rational crewman are named Jeremy Wickwire and Professor Kurt Meyers respectively. In the short story, their names are Mr. Greypoole and Mr. Friden.