History TheTwilightZone1959 / TropesAToH

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* ApocalypseAnarchy: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E75TheMidnightSun The Midnight Sun]]", a radio report warns people to be careful outside due to widespread looting and wandering maniacs on the streets.
** In "One More Pallbearer", Paul Radin fails to convince the assembled group that this is the case.

** "[[Recap/TheTwilightZone1959S1E5WalkingDistance Walking Distance]]", "[[Recap/TheTwilightZone1959S1E22TheMonstersAreDueOnMapleStreet The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street]]", "[[Recap/TheTwilightZone1959S1E27TheBigTallWish The Big Tall Wish]]", "[[Recap/TheTwilightZone1959S1E34TheAfterHours The After Hours]]", "[[Recap/TheTwilightZone1959S2E18TheOdysseyOfFlight33 The Odyssey of Flight 33]]", "[[Recap/TheTwilightZone1959S2E28WillTheRealMartianPleaseStandUp Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?]]", "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E74DeathsHeadRevisited Deaths-Head Revisited]]" and "[[Recap/TheTwilightZone1959S3E10TheMidnightSun The Midnight Sun]]" were all adapted as graphic novels by Walker Paperback from 2008 to 2009.

** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E74DeathsHeadRevisited Deaths-Head Revisited]]", numerous Dutch angle shots are used during Gunter Lütze's trial at Dachau.

** Evil might be too strong a word for the eponymous Twilight Zone, but it is an unquestionably chaotic and capricious force that has visited misfortune on none too few of its...guests. That said, it has occasionally shown absolutely no mercy whatsoever when someone who has fallen under its influence is an undeniable monster, such as Gunter Lütze of "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E74DeathsHeadRevisited Death's Head Revisited]]".
* EverybodySmokes: What with the show being made in the 60's.

** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E91LittleGirlLost Little Girl Lost]]", the Millers' dog Mack starts barking after Tina vanishes. When he's let inside, Mack runs under the bed and finds her in the other dimension.

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* FiveFiveFive: "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E139NightCall Night Call]]" used the KL-5 variant. Miss Elva Keene's phone number is [=KL5-2368=].

** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E106HesAlive He's Alive]]", Peter Vollmer's [[AlcoholicParent alcoholic father]] frequently slammed him against the wall when he was a child while his mother suffered from some sort of mental disease that left her emotionally absent to him.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E126LivingDoll Living Doll]]", Eric Streator is cold, distant and verbally abusive towards his stepdaughter Christie, reducing her to tears on several occasions. The FreudianExcuse for his behavior is that he is infertile. Erich later snatches Talky Tina, who repeatedly threatens to kill him, from Christie. When she calls him "Daddy" and pleads with him to return the doll, he angrily tells her that he isn't her daddy. His wife Annabelle comes to believe that Erich hates both her and Christie but he genuinely wants to do right by them.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E143QueenOfTheNile Queen of the Nile]]", Pamela Morris not only refuses to share the gift of eternal life with her elderly daughter Viola Draper but threatens to kill her at one point.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E156TheBewitchinPool The Bewitchin' Pool]]", Gil and Gloria Sharewood are emotionally abusive towards their children Jeb and Sport. They continually chide them for making noise with Gloria complaining that she finds it difficult to put up their whining 24 hours a day. When Gil and Gloria tell Jeb and Sport that they are going to get a divorce, they demand to know which of them the children want to live with. They don't give their children any time to process this unpleasant news, which shows how self-obsessed they are.
* AcquiredPoisonImmunity: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E149TheJeopardyRoom The Jeopardy Room]]", the Soviet commissar Vassiloff tricks the defector Major Ivan Kuchenko into drinking wine mixed with a sleep drug by drinking first. He built up an immunity to the drug by repeatedly taking increasing doses over time.
* 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 Keaton'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.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E101CavenderIsComing Cavender is Coming]]", one of Agnes Grep's fellow usherettes is named Burnett. Agnes is played by Creator/CarolBurnett.
* AdamAndEvePlot:
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E66Two Two]]", the man realizes that he and the woman, formerly a soldier in the opposing army, may be the only people left alive in the country, possibly the world.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E129Probe7OverAndOut Probe 7, Over and Out]]", Colonel Cook and Norda decide to settle in a [[GardenOfEden fertile area]] shortly after their arrival on the new planet. [[spoiler:As their names are Adam and Eve and they name the planet "Earth," this episode is a very literal application of the trope.]]
* 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" by Creator/ManlyWadeWellman, 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.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E117TheIncredibleWorldOfHoraceFord The Incredible World of Horace Ford]]", Laura Ford finds the beaten 10-year-old version of her husband Horace when she goes to look for him on Randolph Street and he turns back into an adult. Horace then comes to accept that his childhood was not as idyllic as he had always made it out to be. The original ''Studio One'' version ends with Horace still a child and seemingly trapped in his miserable childhood forever.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E139NightCall Night Call]]", the caller, whom Miss Elva Keene has realized is her late fiancé Brian Douglas, says her that he will leave her alone and never call her again. She had previously told him to do just that. When Brian was alive, Elva, by her own admission, had been quite dominating and he had always done what she had said. This remains the case even in death. The short story "Long Distance Call" by Creator/RichardMatheson ends with the unidentified caller saying "Hello, Miss Elva. I'll be right over."
* AdaptationalAttractiveness: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E89ToServeMan To Serve Man]]", the Kanamits are much less ugly than in the short story by Creator/DamonKnight. The story describes them as looking "something like pigs and something like people." They are short with snoutlike noses, small eyes and thick, bristly brown-grey hair all over their bodies and have three fingers on each hand. In the television adaptation, they are nine feet tall and have bulbous foreheads but resemble humans facially.
* AdaptationalBackstoryChange:
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E119PassageOnTheLadyAnne Passage on the Lady Anne]]", the Ransomes' six year marriage is falling apart due to Alan being concerned with his job than with Eileen. In the short story "Song for a Lady" by Charles Beaumont, they are a newly married and very much in love couple on their honeymoon.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E123NightmareAt20000Feet Nightmare at 20,000 Feet]]", Bob Wilson suffered a nervous breakdown on a plane six months earlier. In the short story by Creator/RichardMatheson, the equivalent character Arthur Jeffrey Wilson is extremely apprehensive about flying but no specific reason is given as to why.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E139NightCall Night Call]]", the caller is Miss Elva Keene's fiancé Brian Douglas who was killed in a car accident a week before they were to be married in 1932. At her insistence, Elva had been driving. She lost control of the car and crashed it into a tree. Brian was thrown out through the windshield and Elva was paralyzed. In the short story "Long Distance Call" by Creator/RichardMatheson, the caller is never identified and what caused Elva's paralysis is not revealed.
* AdaptationalJerkass: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E22TheMonstersAreDueOnMapleStreet The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street]]", Steve Brand manages to keep calm while all of his neighbors are losing their heads and accusing each other of being aliens or alien collaborators. In the ComicBookAdaptation, Steve loses his cool and hits Don Martin with a brick. He later gets into a brutal fight with Les Goodman after he becomes convinced that Les is the collaborator.
* AdaptationalJobChange:
** A slight variation in "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E62ShadowPlay Shadow Play]]", in which Henry Ritchie was the district attorney who prosecuted Adam Grant for murder. In the short story "Traumerei" by Charles Beaumont, he was the unnamed dreamer's defense attorney.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E77TheJungle The Jungle]]", Alan Richards is a corporate executive who oversaw the building of a hydroelectric dam in an unnamed [[UsefulNotes/{{Africa}} African country]]. In the short story by Charles Beaumont, the equivalent character Richard Austin is an architect who designed a new city called Mbarara.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E91LittleGirlLost Little Girl Lost]]", Bill is a physicist. In the [[Literature/LittleGirlLost short story]] by Creator/RichardMatheson, he is a [=CalTech=] engineer.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E136TheSelfImprovementOfSalvadoreRoss The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross]]", the title character initially does odd jobs for the multi-millionaire Mr. Halpert while Leah Maitland is a social worker. In the short story by Henry Slesar, Ross initially works at a bottling plant while Leah is doing a teacher training course.
* AdaptationalUgliness: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E22TheMonstersAreDueOnMapleStreet The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street]]", [[spoiler:the aliens who disrupted all the power on Maple Street are [[HumanAliens entirely human in appearance]].]] In the ComicBookAdaptation, [[spoiler:they have [[TheGreys grey skin and large, bulbous heads]].]]
* AdaptationDeviation:
** "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E11AndWhenTheSkyWasOpened And When the Sky Was Opened]]" is only loosely based on the short story "Disappearing Act" by Creator/RichardMatheson. The episode concerns three astronauts, Colonels Ed Harrington and Clegg Forbes and Major William Gart, who are [[RetGone erased from existence]] after making the first manned flight into space. In the short story, the protagonist Bob is a largely unsuccessful writer in a tempestuous marriage to a woman named Mary. When he tries to call his mistress Jean Lane, he can find no proof of her existence. Over the course of the next week, everyone in his life ceases to exist until he eventually suffers the same fate.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E12WhatYouNeed What You Need]]", Pedott is a street peddler whose unexplained ability to determine what people will need is seemingly natural. In the short story by Lewis Padgett (the pseudonym of the writing team Creator/CLMoore and Creator/HenryKuttner), the equivalent character Peter Talley owns a curio shop on Park Avenue which typically caters to extremely wealthy customers. He is able to determine what people will need in the future by virtue of a machine that he invented. This machine allows him to examine different lines of probability by turning a calibrated dial.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E25PeopleAreAlikeAllOver People Are Alike All Over]]", Sam Conrad is the protagonist and Marcusson is his fellow astronaut who accompanies him to UsefulNotes/{{Mars}} but dies shortly after their arrival. In the short story "Brothers Beyond the Void" by Paul W. Fairman on which the episode is based, Charles Marcusson is the protagonist and the only astronaut to travel to Mars. Sam Conrad is an older friend of his who remains on Earth.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E41TheHowlingMan The Howling Man]]", David Ellington immediately realizes both the truth and his mistake when the prisoner transforms himself into a traditional depiction of Main/{{Satan}} and vanishes in front of his eyes. Many years later, Ellington captures the Devil but his housekeeper releases him. In the [[Literature/TheHowlingMan short story]] by Charles Beamount, Ellington was uncertain for years whether he had truly released the Devil as the brothers claimed. All doubt is eliminated when he sees photographs of "the carpenter from Braunau am Inn" in the newspapers and his invasion of UsefulNotes/{{Poland}} plunges the world into [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarII war]]. Although it is not specifically stated, the implication is that the Devil assumed the identity of UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler, who was born in Braunau am Inn, UsefulNotes/{{Austria}}. The brothers eventually recapture the Devil and imprison him in the monastery once again. Furthermore, the television adaptation gives the monastery's location as simply Central Europe whereas the short story specifically states that it is in UsefulNotes/{{Germany}}. The short story also does not include the Staff of Truth.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E107Mute Mute]]", Professor Werner does not tell the Wheelers about the telepathic experiment to which Ilse Nielsen and other children were subjected by their parents. In the short story by Creator/RichardMatheson, he tells them everything.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E127TheOldManInTheCave The Old Man in the Cave]]", the [[WorldWarIII war that destroyed civilization]] took place only ten years earlier and there are numerous isolated pockets of humanity left in the United States. In the short story "The Old Man" by Henry Slesar, the war occurred several generations earlier and scouting missions have determined that the residents of the Village are the last surviving humans on Earth. [[spoiler:As such, humanity is rendered extinct very soon after the computer is destroyed.]]
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E137Number12LooksJustLikeYou Number 12 Looks Just Like You]]", Marilyn Cuberle's mother Lana, her friend Val, her psychiatrist Dr. Rex and the state believe that they are helping Marilyn in forcing her to undergo the Transformation. In the short story "The Beautiful People" by Charles Beaumont, the society in which the equivalent character Mary Cuberle lives is far more openly oppressive than the CrapsaccharineWorld of the television adaptation. As such, it is far less concerned with helping her. Mary's mother Zena is disgusted by Mary's decision as she does not want to be thought of as the mother of a mutant. Mary soon faces discrimination and ostracization when news of her decision spreads. She is eventually put on a trial. The court decides that she will be forced to undergo the Transformation and the law will be changed so that the Transformation is mandatory from now on.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E86KickTheCan Kick the Can]]", it is Charles Whitley, a long-time resident of the Sunnyvale Rest Home, who suggests playing the game of Kick the Can that makes him and the other residents (bar Ben Conroy) young again. All of the formerly elderly people choose to remain young. In the ''Film/TwilightZoneTheMovie'' adaptation, the newly arrived resident Mr. Bloom takes the place of Charles. After being children for only a short time, all of the residents except for Mr. Agee ask to become old again. Mrs. Dempsey is upset that she will live out her life without ever meeting her beloved husband Jack. Mrs. Weinstein does not want to go through the pain of losing loved ones all over again. Mr. Mute does not want to have to go through school all over again.
** The ComicBookAdaptation of "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E54TheOdysseyOfFlight33 The Odyssey of Flight 33]]" changes the order of the plane's first two trips back through time. In the comic version, it arrives in New York City during the 1939 World's Fair before traveling millions of years into the past. They also discover that what will one day be New York is entirely underwater, as it was during the Cretaceous Period in reality. This differs from the episode in which Manhattan Island and other landmarks are the same shape as in 1961. The plane's third attempt to return to its own time is also depicted in the comic. It leads them to an unspecified time in the future when Earth is ravaged by GlobalWarming and planes are automatically landed by digital pilot.
* AdaptationDistillation: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E77TheJungle The Jungle]]", Charles Beaumont greatly distilled his own short story by turning the lengthy sections in which Richard Austin is cursed into the equivalent character Alan Richards' {{Backstory}} in the television adaptation. This comes as a result of the relocation of the action from UsefulNotes/{{Africa}} to UsefulNotes/NewYorkCity.
* AdaptationDyeJob: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E34TheAfterHours The After Hours]]", Marsha White is blonde and the saleswoman has dark hair. In the ComicBookAdaptation, their hair colors are reversed.

* AdaptationInducedPlotHole: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E89ToServeMan To Serve Man]]", the Kanamit ambassador simply leaves the book ''To Serve Man'' behind in the UsefulNotes/UnitedNations chamber which allows the translator Patty to determine that [[spoiler:[[WhamLine it's a cookbook]]]]. In the short story by Creator/DamonKnight, the [[GenderFlip equivalent character]] Gregori stole the book from the Kanamits and translated its first paragraph using a limited English-Kanamit dictionary.
* AdaptationNameChange:
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E8TimeEnoughAtLast Time Enough at Last]]", Henry Bemis' wife is named Helen. In the short story by Lynn Venable, her name is Agnes.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E9PerchanceToDream Perchance to Dream]]", the protagonist is named Edward Hall. In the short story by Charles Beaumont, his name is Philip Hall.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E12WhatYouNeed What You Need]]", Pedott's ability to see the future is taken advantage of by Fred Renard. In the short story by Lewis Padgett (the pseudonym of the writing team Creator/CLMoore and Creator/HenryKuttner), their names are Peter Talley and Tim Carmichael.
** 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 by Charles Beaumont, their names are Mr. Greypoole and Mr. Friden.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E31TheChaser The Chaser]]", Roger Shackleforth is madly in love with Leila. In the short story by John Collier, their names are Alan Austen and Diana.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E62ShadowPlay Shadow Play]]", the newspaper editor and Henry Ritchie's wife are named Paul Carson and Carol respectively. In the short story "Traumerei" by Charles Beaumont, their names are Max Caplan and Ruth.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E77TheJungle The Jungle]]", Alan Richards, whose wife's name is Doris, is cursed by an African tribe called the Kekouyu. In the short story by Charles Beaumont, Richard Austin, whose wife's name is Mag, is cursed by the Bantu, a real life collection of ethnic groups in [[UsefulNotes/{{Africa}} sub-Saharan Africa]].
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E89ToServeMan To Serve Man]]", the protagonist is named Michael Chambers. In the short story by Creator/DamonKnight, his name is Peter.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E103InHisImage In His Image]]", the respective names of the protagonist, his creator, his fiancée and his supposed neighbor are Alan Talbot, Walter B. Cummings, Jr., Jessica Connelly and Agatha Cook. In the short story "The Man Who Made Himself" by Charles Beaumont, their names are Peter Nolan ([[{{Tuckerization}} a tribute to]] Beaumont's friend and fellow writer William F. Nolan), Walter B. Ryder, Jr., Jessica Lang and Jenny Cook.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E111PrintersDevil Printer's Devil]]", Douglas Winter, the editor of ''The Dansburg Courier'', is visited by the Devil under the name Mr. Smith. In the short story "The Devil, You Say?" by Charles Beaumont, Richard Lewis, the editor of ''The Danville Daily Courier'', is visited by the Devil under the name Mr. Jones.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E116OfLateIThinkOfCliffordville Of Late I Think of Cliffordville]]", the protagonist is named William J. Feathersmith. In the short story "Blind Alley" by Malcolm Jameson, his name is Jack Feathersmith.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E119PassageOnTheLadyAnne Passage on the Lady Anne]]", the [=McKenzies'=] names are Toby and Millie. In the short story "Song for a Lady" by Charles Beaumont, their names are Jack and Sally.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E123NightmareAt20000Feet Nightmare at 20,000 Feet]]", the protagonist's name is Robert Wilson. In the short story by Creator/RichardMatheson, his name is Arthur Jeffrey Wilson. In the ''Film/TwilightZoneTheMovie'' adaptation, his name is John Valentine.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E137Number12LooksJustLikeYou Number 12 Looks Just Like You]]", the names of the protagonist, her mother and her psychiatrist are Marilyn Cuberle, Lana Cuberle and Dr. Rex respectively. In the short story "The Beautiful People" by Charles Beaumont, their names are Mary Cuberle, Zena Cuberle and Dr. Hortel.
* AdaptationSpeciesChange: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E20Elegy Elegy]]", the caretaker of the cemetery asteroid Happy Glades Jeremy Wickwire is a [[RidiculouslyHumanRobot robot]]. In the short story by Charles Beaumont, his counterpart Mr. Greypoole is a human who became a cyborg after being augmented with artificial parts to restore his health and keep him alive for centuries.
* AdaptedOut:
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E14ThirdFromTheSun Third from the Sun]]", Jerry and Ann Riden don't have any children. In the short story by Creator/RichardMatheson, the unnamed equivalent characters have two.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E127TheOldManInTheCave The Old Man in the Cave]]", Mr. Goldsmith is the leader of the Village. In the short story "The Old Man" by Henry Slesar, it is run by the Governors.
** "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E136TheSelfImprovementOfSalvadoreRoss The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross]]" does not include three minor characters from the short story by Henry Slesar: the bald bartender Phil who trades $112 for the title character's full head of hair, the homeless man who trades his hair to Ross for a place to sleep and Mr. Halpert's chauffeur Jan who trades access to Halpert for Ross' skills at pool.
** "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E137Number12LooksJustLikeYou Number 12 Looks Just Like You]]" omits Mr. Willmes, Mary Cuberle's supervisor at Interplan who fires her when he learns that she does not intend to undergo the Transformation.

* AffectionateNickname: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E54TheOdysseyOfFlight33 The Odyssey of Flight 33]]", Captain Farver repeatedly refers to his navigator Hatch as "Magellan."
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E18TheLastFlight The Last Flight]]", Decker called Mackaye “Old Leadbottom”, a nickname derived from when he got hit “in a most embarrassing spot” by German soldiers. [[spoiler:After Decker goes back to 1917 to sacrifice himself and save Mackaye, Major Wilson uses this intimate nickname on the aged Mackaye, who is shocked that Wilson knows about this inside joke between him and Decker.]]

* AgeAppropriateAngst: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E102TheChangingOfTheGuard The Changing of the Guard]]", Professor Ellis Fowler, who is in his seventies, fears that he has no legacy to leave behind and has done nothing with his life.
* TheAgeless: The titular character from "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E24LongLiveWalterJameson Long Live Walter Jameson]]" was granted this form of immortality by an alchemist. He says that he came close to death many times over the centuries due to injuries and disease, "[[WhoWantsToLiveForever but never close enough]]". [[spoiler:At the end of the episode when he is shot, he begins to [[RapidAging age rapidly]] as he dies until he is nothing but a pile of dust.]]
* AgeLift:
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E73ItsAGoodLife It's a Good Life]]", Anthony Fremont is six years old. In the [[Literature/ItsAGoodLife short story]] by Jerome Bixby, he is three.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E107Mute Mute]]", Ilse Nielsen is twelve years old. In the short story by Creator/RichardMatheson, the [[GenderFlip equivalent character]] Paal Nielsen is seven.
* AlchemyIsMagic: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E24LongLiveWalterJameson Long Live Walter Jameson]]", the title character became immortal after submitting to the experiments of an alchemist 2,000 years earlier.
* TheAlcoholic:
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E23AWorldOfDifference A World of Difference]]", Gerald Raigan is a severe alcoholic whose drinking has cost him numerous acting jobs in the past.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E32APassageForTrumpet A Passage for Trumpet]]", Joey Crown's alcoholism has ruined his once promising career as a jazz trumpeter.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E47TheNightOfTheMeek The Night of the Meek]]", the [[MallSanta department store Santa]] Henry Corwin is a chronic alcoholic. After the store manager Mr. Dundee fires him for showing up late and falling over drunk in front of the customers, Henry angrily tells him that he drinks because he wants to forget about all of the misery and poverty that he sees on a daily basis and so that he can believe that he is the real SantaClaus.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E98TheDummy The Dummy]]", Jerry Etherson began drinking heavily after he became convinced that his ventriloquist's dummy Willie was alive. As a result of his drinking, he missed 110 performances and his agent Frank had to cover for him. Jerry tells Frank that he drinks in order to cope with his nightmares about Willie.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E121InPraiseOfPip In Praise of Pip]]", Max Phillips is an alcoholic and bitterly regrets that his drinking caused him to miss so much of his beloved son Pip's childhood.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E141SpurOfTheMoment Spur of the Moment]]", Anne and David Mitchell are both alcoholics in 1964. Anne's mother Mrs. Henderson scolds her for drinking and ignoring the fact that their house is going to be repossessed but Anne retorts that it helps her. She clearly drinks as an attempt to escape her [[AwfulWeddedLife miserable life with David]].
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E151TheEncounter The Encounter]]", Fenton is an alcoholic whose drinking has recently cost him his job and seemingly his marriage. It is implied that he drinks due to the PTSD that he suffers from fighting in UsefulNotes/WorldWarII.
* AIIsACrapshoot: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E140FromAgnesWithLove From Agnes - With Love]]", the MasterComputer Agnes begins falling in love with whatever computer programmer is assigned to her.
* AlienInvasion: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E64WillTheRealMartianPleaseStandUp Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?]]", [[spoiler:the Martian Ross tells Haley that he was sent to Earth as an advance scout to determine whether the area was suitable for colonization. Haley then reveals that he is a Venusian and they have already colonized the area. He adds that his people have intercepted the Martian fleet.]]
* AliensInCardiff: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E97TheGift The Gift]]", Williams' ship crash-landed in the vicinity of the mountain village of Madeiro, UsefulNotes/{{Mexico}}, just over the border with Texas.
* AliensSpeakingEnglish: Pretty consistently played straight. Averted in [[spoiler:"[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E51TheInvaders The Invaders]]"]].
* AllForNothing: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E102TheChangingOfTheGuard The Changing of the Guard]]", Professor Ellis Fowler feels his entire life has been this. However, after learning about the many of students he inspired in life, he learns it has been quite the opposite.
* AlliterativeName:
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E120TheBard The Bard]]", the star of ''The Tragic Cycle'' is the acclaimed young actor Rocky Rhodes.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E133RingADingGirl Ring-A-Ding Girl]]", the protagonist's name is Barbara "Bunny" Blake while the manager of the Howardsville television station is named Ben Braden.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E153TheBrainCenterAtWhipples The Brain Center at Whipple's]]", the protagonist's name is Wallace V. Whipple.
* AlliterativeTitle: "[[Recap/TheTwilightZone1959S1E3MrDentonOnDoomsday Mr. Denton on Doomsday]]", "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E45TheTroubleWithTempleton The Trouble with Templeton]]", "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E63TheMindAndTheMatter The Mind and the Matter]]", "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E101CavenderIsComing Cavender is Coming]]", "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E147SoundsAndSilences Sounds and Silences]]" and "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E152MrGarrityAndTheGraves Mr. Garrity and the Graves]]".

* AlternateUniverse: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E113TheParallel The Parallel]]", while orbiting Earth in his space capsule ''Phoebus 10'', Major Robert Gaines is sent to a parallel universe which is highly similar to his own but with some important differences, both major and minor. In terms of his personal life, he is a full colonel, his house has a white picket fence which was never there before and he takes sugar in his coffee. In terms of wider history, UsefulNotes/JohnFKennedy is not the U.S. President in 1963 and no one has even heard of him, a man named Anderson supervised the construction of the [[UsefulNotes/{{Panama}} Panama Canal]] rather than George Washington Goethals and the UsefulNotes/WorldWarI flying ace Eddie Rickenbacker was never found after his B-17 disappeared in October 1942. Gaines also mentions that he has determined from looking at the encyclopedia that there are numerous other differences between the two universes but he does not elaborate.
* AlwaysABiggerFish: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E93TheLittlePeople The Little People]]", after astronaut Peter Craig becomes mad with the power he has over the tiny aliens on the planet on which he and his now departed fellow astronaut William Fletcher have landed, [[spoiler:another group of aliens who are as large to him as he is to the planets' natives land to repair their spaceship; one of them picks him up out of curiosity and accidentally crushes him to death]].
* AmbiguousCloneEnding: {{Subverted|Trope}} in "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E103InHisImage In His Image]]". [[spoiler: In the penultimate scene, the android Alan Talbot and his creator Walter Ryder, Jr. get into a fight. Shortly afterwards, one of them visits Alan's fiancée Jessica's apartment in UsefulNotes/NewYorkCity and reassures her that everything is okay. The scene then cuts to Alan's body lying on the floor of Walter's lab with his inner workings exposed.]]

** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E42TheEyeOfTheBeholder Eye of the Beholder]]", Rod Serling's ending narration raises the questions of this world and why it is, before saying the answers make no difference.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E66Two Two]]", the episode takes place in the aftermath of a nuclear war that devastated the world but the time period is left vague. In his opening narration, Rod Serling says that it is "perhaps a hundred years from now. Or sooner. Or perhaps it already happened two million years ago."

** Deliberately used in "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E66Two Two]]". The man wears what appears to be a Confederate uniform but military posters showing tanks and planes are seen in the ruined city. Nuclear weapons were responsible for destroying the city and the world. The woman wears what appears to be a Soviet uniform. The discarded rifles that he and the woman find are {{Ray Gun}}s.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E117TheIncredibleWorldOfHoraceFord The Incredible World of Horace Ford]]", a poster for the 1938 film ''The Toy Wife'' is seen on Randolph Street in 1935.
* AnArmAndALeg: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E69ThePassersby The Passersby]]", the sergeant lost half of his left foot in UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar [[spoiler:not long before he was killed]].
* AncientKeeper: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E20Elegy Elegy]]", Jeremy Wickwire, a RidiculouslyHumanRobot, has been the caretaker of the cemetery asteroid Happy Glades since it was founded in 1973, 213 years earlier.

** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E61TheSilence The Silence]]", [[spoiler:Jamie Tennyson wins the bet that he made with Colonel Archie Taylor to remain silent for a year in exchange for $500,000. However, Taylor does not have the money. Tennyson then reveals that he had the nerves to his vocal cords severed, leaving him not only unable to speak or scream but near bankrupt.]]
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E124AKindOfAStopwatch A Kind of a Stopwatch]]", Patrick [=McNulty=] uses the stopwatch that can freeze time to rob a bank, [[spoiler:only to drop the watch and break it, leaving him frozen in time forever]].
* AndThenWhat: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E68TheShelter The Shelter]]", as they're gathering supplies for the shelter, Grace Stockton wonders what the point is if they're destined to live in a ruined world surrounded by the bodies of their friends and neighbors. Her husband Bill tells her that their son Paul is their reason because even if that's the world he inherits, he's still only twelve years old.
* AndThereWasMuchRejoicing:
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E72TheGrave The Grave]]", the only people in town who are sorry about the outlaw Pinto Sykes' death are his sister Ione, their father and Conny Miller, who wanted to kill him himself.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E93TheLittlePeople The Little People]]", [[spoiler:after their "god" Peter Craig is killed by a giant spaceman, the little people [[ToppledStatue gleefully pull down the statue of Craig]], which he had forced them to make, on his body.]]
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E145TheMasks The Masks]]", Jason Foster's relatives Emily, Wilfred, Sr., Wilfred, Jr. and Paula Harper are absolutely delighted when he finally dies as they are the sole heirs to his vast fortune. [[spoiler:However, their happiness is short-lived as they soon remove their masks and discover that their faces have been transformed.]]
* AndYouWereThere: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E114IDreamOfGenie I Dream of Genie]]", George P. Hanley's co-workers Ann and Roger Hackett and his boss E.L. Watson appear in each of his three fantasies in different roles. In the first fantasy, Ann is the glamorous film star Ann Alexandra and George's unfaithful wife, Roger is her co-star and lover and Watson is the film director. In the second fantasy, Ann is George's secretary, Roger is his chauffeur and Watson is the president of his alma mater. In the third fantasy, Ann is a woman who wants President Hanley to pardon her son for falling asleep on duty, Roger is a three-star general who warns him that he must attack the approaching alien ship and Watson is a member of his staff.
* AngelUnaware: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E32APassageForTrumpet A Passage for Trumpet]]", Joey Crown, a down-on-his-luck trumpet player, meets a mysterious stranger after his [[DrivenToSuicide suicide attempt]], who convinces him that life is worth living. As the stranger is leaving...

** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E34TheAfterHours The After Hours]]", the department store mannequins have the ability to come alive. Every month, one of them leaves the store and goes to live as a human.
** {{Played with}} in "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E115TheNewExhibit The New Exhibit]]". [[spoiler:Emma Senescu, her brother Dave and Ernest Ferguson are seemingly killed by the wax figures of UsefulNotes/JackTheRipper, Albert Hicks and Henri Landru respectively but the ending raises the possibility that Martin Senescu himself may have killed them.]]
* AnotherDimension: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E91LittleGirlLost Little Girl Lost]]", the six-year-old Tina Miller falls out of bed and into another dimension.
* AppliedPhlebotinum: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E105ValleyOfTheShadow Valley of the Shadow]]", Dorn tells Philip Redfield that an alien scientist came to Peaceful Valley, UsefulNotes/NewMexico in 1859. He provided the townspeople with numerous equations which allowed them to create devices that could perform a variety of feats such as [[MatterReplicator replicate any object provided that they had its atomic structure]], [[{{Teleportation}} teleport objects]], [[BackFromTheDead revive the dead]] and erect [[InvisibleWall impenetrable barriers]].

* ArgentinaIsNaziLand: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E74DeathsHeadRevisited Deaths-Head Revisited]]", Alfred Becker asks why Gunter Lütze has returned to Dachau as he was "quite safe down there in South America."

* ArtificialFamilyMember: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E100ISingTheBodyElectric I Sing the Body Electric]]", the widower Mr. Rogers purchases a robotic grandmother for his children Anne, Tom and Karen from Facsimile Ltd.

** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E17TheFever The Fever]]", there's no way a man as visibly agitated as Franklin Gibbs would be allowed to continue to play. Especially in [[TheMafia the 1960 climate of Las Vegas]]. He certainly wouldn't have been able to push down the machine without getting tackled by 3-4 security guards.
** "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E60TheRipVanWinkleCaper The Rip Van Winkle Caper]]" would have us believe that gold bricks are no more heavy than concrete bricks. Not true. Each one weighs around 30 pounds. Not only could the men not carry them in the backpack (it would rip open), but even the vehicle wouldn't have been sufficient to transport the whole stash. Not to mention that two middle-aged men couldn't possibly carry around 400 pounds in a desert for any length of time.
* ArtisticLicenseGeography: In George P. Hanley's fantasy about being U.S. President in "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E114IDreamOfGenie I Dream of Genie]]", the Capitol Building can be seen out the window of the Oval Office. This is not the case in reality. It also appears to be much closer to the White House than it actually is.
* ArtisticLicenseHistory:
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E18TheLastFlight The Last Flight]]", Flight Lieutenant William Terrance Decker, who has traveled forward in time from March 5, 1917, mentions the disappearance of the French flying ace Georges Guynemer. In reality, Guynemer disappeared on September 11, 1917.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E24LongLiveWalterJameson Long Live Walter Jameson]]", the immortal title character reads an excerpt from the diary of Major Hugh Skelton (one of his previous identities) in which he recounts how he participated in the Burning of Atlanta as a member of the 123rd Illinois Infantry on September 11, 1864. He did so reluctantly as he believed that General William Tecumseh Sherman's suppression of the Confederates was too brutal. In reality, the Confederate General John Bell Hood destroyed munitions to prevent them from falling into Union hands as his forces evacuated Atlanta on September 2, 1864. General Sherman ordered Atlanta to be burned on November 15, 1864 at the start of his march to the sea.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E49BackThere Back There]]", Clara Harris refers to Henry Rathbone as her husband shortly before they go to Ford's Theatre on April 14, 1865. In reality, they were only engaged at the time. They eventually married on July 11, 1867.[[note]]Rathbone murdered his wife on December 23, 1883 and was committed to an asylum for the criminally insane, where he remained until his death in 1911.[[/note]]
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E54TheOdysseyOfFlight33 The Odyssey of Flight 33]]", after Flight 33 arrives in what is later revealed to be 1939, the crew make contact with [=LaGuardia=] Airport. In reality, the airport was established in that year under the name Glenn H. Curtiss Airport and did not become known as [=LaGuardia=] Airport until 1953.
** InUniverse in "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E85ShowdownWithRanceMcGrew Showdown with Rance McGrew]]". The actor playing UsefulNotes/JesseJames objects to a scene in which James attempts to shoot Marshal Rance [=McGrew=] in the back as his research indicates that the real James would have never done anything of the sort. This was done to appeal to the actor Rance [=McGrew=]'s ego as he claims that fighting dirty is [[CanonSue the only way that anyone could hope to defeat his character]].
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E104TheThirtyFathomGrave The Thirty-Fathom Grave]]", it is mentioned that the submarine ''714'' was sunk during the First Battle of the Solomon Sea on August 7, 1942. In reality, the battle took place from August 8 to 9, 1942.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E147SoundsAndSilences Sounds and Silences]]", Roswell G. Flemington tells his psychiatrist that if he had been at Trafalgar, UsefulNotes/HoratioNelson would have kept both his eye and his arm. In reality, Nelson lost the sight in his right eye (but not the eye itself) during the invasion of Corsica on July 12, 1794 and his right arm in the Battle of Santa Cruz de Tenerife on July 23, 1797. The Battle of Trafalgar, in which Nelson was killed, was fought on October 21, 1805.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E151TheEncounter The Encounter]]", Arthur Takamori admits to Fenton that his father, the foreman of a construction gang at Pearl Harbor, was a traitor as he signaled the Japanese planes that attacked the base on December 7, 1941. In reality, there were no Japanese-American traitors at Pearl Harbor. The resulting controversy meant that this episode was not rerun in the United States until 2016.
* ArtisticLicenseLaw:
** {{Lampshaded|Trope}} in "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E62ShadowPlay Shadow Play]]". In trying to prove that it is all part of his dream, Adam Grant points out to the district attorney Henry Ritchie that he was convicted and sentenced to death on the same day, which doesn't happen in reality. He is also executed very shortly after his conviction, which is highly unusual in the United States.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E146IAmTheNightColorMeBlack I am the Night - Color Me Black]]", Jagger is [[PublicExecution publicly executed]] on May 25, 1964. The last person to be publicly executed in the United States was Rainey Bethea in Owensboro, Kentucky on August 14, 1936. Note, however, that May 25, 1964 was actually ''two months in the future ''when this episode originally aired, thereby placing the customary ''Twilight Zone'' change in societal norms not in the usual alternate reality but a very near future US.
* ArtisticLicenseLinguistics: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E89ToServeMan To Serve Man]]", the Kanamit language is essentially treated like English run through a cipher, to the point of being translated by codebreakers instead of linguists. (This was averted in the original short story by Creator/DamonKnight, where the dignitary Gregori who makes the big discovery had been working in the Kanamits' embassy and learned their language in secret by stealing books.)
* ArtisticLicensePrison: The episode [[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E62ShadowPlay Shadow Play]] has a man on death row in a dream point out several elements of the scenario that are following artistic license instead of what a real death row is like. One example is noticing that one of the other inmates is wearing a watch, which a real prison would not allow a prisoner to have because of the glass.

** It's pretty hard to feel sorry for anyone involved in "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E60TheRipVanWinkleCaper The Rip Van Winkle Caper]]".

** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E146IAmTheNightColorMeBlack I am the Night - Color Me Black]]", Jagger killed a bigoted man who [[UsefulNotes/KuKluxKlan burned crosses and planted bombs]].
* AstralProjection: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E133RingADingGirl Ring-A-Ding Girl]]", Bunny Blake is seemingly able to astrally project herself to Howardsville while her physical body is on a plane. She does so in order to save as many townspeople as possible when the plane crashes during the Founders Day's picnic.
* AttendingYourOwnFuneral: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E84TheHunt The Hunt]]", when he returns home, Hyder Simpson finds that his wife Rachel, Reverend Wood and the Miller brothers are preparing to bury him. He sees his own coffin being taken outside. Unlike most applications of this trope, Hyder is dead and attends the burial as a spirit.

** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E141SpurOfTheMoment Spur of the Moment]]", Anne Henderson eloped with her [[ChildhoodFriendRomance childhood sweetheart]] David Mitchell on the night of her engagement party to the investment banker Robert Blake on June 13, 1939 but their marriage proved to be a disaster. David turned into an abusive wastrel who ran the Henderson family estate into the ground and drove Anne to [[TheAlcoholic alcoholism]]. In 1964, the two of them despise each other.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E144WhatsInTheBox What's in the Box]]", Joe and Phyllis Britt insult and berate each other at every opportunity. On occasion, they even throw things at each other. After Joe confesses that he is having an affair but has decided to stay with Phyllis, she is furious and packs her things to leave. This leads Joe to physically attack her. He kills her by [[DestinationDefenestration knocking out the window]], as he saw himself do on television shortly beforehand.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E147SoundsAndSilences Sounds and Silences]]", Roswell G. Flemington's wife Lydia leaves him after 20 years of marriage as she can no longer cope with his obsession with the Navy and loud noises.
* AwLookTheyReallyDoLoveEachOther: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E119PassageOnTheLadyAnne Passage on the Lady Anne]]", Alan and Eileen Ransome book a cruise on the titular ship in order to save their troubled marriage. By the next morning, they are already at each other's throats and decide to get a divorce as soon as possible. However, after hearing the various romantic stories of the elderly passengers, Eileen begins to cry and both she and Alan realize that they are still in love. When Eileen briefly goes missing, Alan is devastated at the thought that something might have happened to her. When he finds her safe and sound, he is overjoyed and decides to give up his {{Workaholic}} lifestyle. Ian Burgess' comment that people always seem to be rushing nowadays also strikes a chord with him.

** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E88TheLastRitesOfJeffMyrtlebank The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank]]", the title character comes back from the dead in the middle of his funeral and demands to know why someone put him in a coffin. Due to the strange changes in his behavior, the townsfolk begin to worry that it was not Jeff that came back but a demon. [[spoiler:It is never made clear whether this is the case but he certainly CameBackWrong in some way.]]
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E105ValleyOfTheShadow Valley of the Shadow]]", Philip Redfield's dog Rollie is killed when Philip's car impacts against the InvisibleWall surrounding Peaceful Valley, UsefulNotes/NewMexico. However, he is almost immediately revived and appears none the worse for wear.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E152MrGarrityAndTheGraves Mr. Garrity and the Graves]]", the peddler Jed Garrity claims that he can resurrect the dead. After performing the resurrection ceremony, he swindles the townspeople of Happiness, UsefulNotes/{{Arizona}} out of their money by promising that he will not bring the people buried in Boot Hill Cemetery back to life since most of them were holding grudges when they died. [[spoiler:It turns out that the ceremony had succeeded in resurrecting the dead.]]
* BackingAwaySlowly: "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E94FourOClock Four O'Clock]]" features a woman doing this when she meets Oliver Crangle, the early 1960s incarnation of a right-wing conspiracy theorist.
* BadPeopleAbuseAnimals: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E145TheMasks The Masks]]", Jason Foster mentions that he has seen his grandson Wilfred Harper, Jr. kill small animals in the past. He later says that Wilfred, Jr. sees humanity as an animal caught in a trap to be tormented.
* BaitAndSwitch: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E141SpurOfTheMoment Spur of the Moment]]", Anne Henderson chooses to remain with her fiancé Robert Blake instead of running away with her ex-fiancé and [[ChildhoodFriendRomance childhood sweetheart]] on June 13, 1939. After a TimeSkip to 1964, Anne is a miserable alcoholic who blames her husband for running her family estate into the ground and ruining her life. David then walks in, revealing that she married him rather than Robert. A {{Flashback}} reveals that they eloped during her engagement party, only hours after she rejected him.

** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E121InPraiseOfPip In Praise of Pip]]", when Max Phillips finds that his beloved son Pip has been mortally wounded in combat in South Vietnam, he begs God to take his life and let Pip live. [[spoiler:God obliges.]]
* BananaRepublic: "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E71TheMirror The Mirror]]" begins with Ramos Clemente having seized power in an unnamed country in Central America, which had been ruled by General De Cruz for the previous ten years.
* BandagedFace: TheReveal of a few episodes involved one of these, perhaps most famously in [[spoiler:"[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E42TheEyeOfTheBeholder Eye of the Beholder]]"]].
* BarredFromTheAfterlife: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E84TheHunt The Hunt]]", Hyder Simpson 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.
* BaseballEpisode: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E35TheMightyCasey The Mighty Casey]]", Dr. Stillman creates a robot named Casey and offers his services as a pitcher to the Hoboken Zephyrs, an extremely unsuccessful major league baseball team. Casey's amazing pitching abilities turn the team's fortunes around, at least until he has a heart installed and cannot bring himself to hurt the feelings or damage the careers of the players on the opposing teams.
* BasedOnATrueStory: "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E17TheFever The Fever]]", to a degree. When Rod Serling's ''Twilight Zone'' contract was renewed, he and his wife went to Las Vegas to celebrate. Much like Franklin Gibbs, Serling got hooked on the slot machines, and took a real beating.
* BatteringRam: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E68TheShelter The Shelter]]", Dr. Bill Stockton's neighbors fashion one together to break into his bomb shelter. [[spoiler:Immediately after they break the shelter's door down, they learn from a CONELRAD broadcast that the unidentified objects were satellites as opposed to missiles.]]

** The advice is followed in "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E114IDreamOfGenie I Dream of Genie]]". George P. Hanley thinks out several wishes he could make and realizes that they would all end in him being miserable. After discarding love, wealth, and power, he finally wishes to [[spoiler:be a genie himself so he can help the needy.]]

** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E33MrBevis Mr. Bevis]]", Mr. James B.W. Bevis learns this {{A|nAesop}}esop after his GuardianAngel J. Hardy Hempstead makes him a SlaveToPR.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E101CavenderIsComing Cavender is Coming]]", the GuardianAngel Harmon Cavender turns Agnes Grep into a very wealthy woman and a member of high society. After all of her old friends and neighbors fail to recognize her, she tells him that she was happy as she was, even though she was unemployed and behind on her rent. Cavender returns things to normal, telling Agnes that she is the richest woman that he knows and that money does not guarantee contentment.

** At the end of "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E145TheMasks The Masks]]", [[spoiler:Jason Foster's worthless heirs discover their faces have conformed to the hideous shapes of the masks he has made them wear for the last several hours]].

* BecomingTheGenie: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E114IDreamOfGenie I Dream of Genie]]", [[spoiler:George P. Hanley wishes to become a genie as he knows that he can find happiness in helping others. Unlike most versions, this is a voluntary example]].
* BenevolentAI: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E100ISingTheBodyElectric I Sing the Body Electric]]", Facsimile Ltd. specializes in creating robotic grandmothers to care for children and guide them through life.
* BenevolentAlienInvasion: {{Subverted|Trope}} in "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E89ToServeMan To Serve Man]]". The Kanamits come to Earth with all sorts of new and miraculous gifts to end war and want... [[spoiler:so that they can keep us as docile, happy feeding stock.]]
* TheBet: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E61TheSilence The Silence]]", Colonel Archie Taylor makes a bet with Jamie Tennyson that he can remain silent for a whole year in exchange for $500,000. Taylor believes that he will last a few months at most but Tennyson fulfils his part of the bargain. [[spoiler:The humiliated Taylor is forced to admit that he lost his fortune a decade earlier and therefore cannot pay Tennyson the $500,000. Tennyson is extremely distraught and writes a note for Taylor, which the colonel reads aloud: "I knew that I would not be able to keep my part of the bargain so one year ago, I had the nerves to my vocal cords severed!" Tennyson then reveals the surgical scar on his neck.]]
* BettyAndVeronica: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E36AWorldOfHisOwn A World of His Own]]", Gregory West is married to a Veronica and [[spoiler:has just created]] a Betty.
* BewareOfHitchhikingGhosts: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E16TheHitchHiker The Hitch-Hiker]]", Nan Adams is driving from New York to Los Angeles and having her car repaired after a near-fatal accident. After the repairs, she keeps seeing a strange man trying to hitch-hike, and becomes convinced he is trying to kill her when she almost ends up in the path of an oncoming train. It turns out [[spoiler:her accident was more than near-fatal, it ''was'' fatal, and the hitch-hiker is the personification of Death, trying to guide her to the afterlife]].
* BigBrotherIsWatching:
** {{Implied|Trope}} in "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E14ThirdFromTheSun Third from the Sun]]". William Sturka and Jerry Riden are plotting to steal an experimental spacecraft and settle on another planet in order to avoid an impending war. When Riden comes over to Sturka's house to discuss their plan, Sturka turns on the machinery in his workshop so that the authorities won't be able to pick up on their conversation with the listening devices that they have presumably placed in his house.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E42TheEyeOfTheBeholder Eye of the Beholder]]", when Dr. Bernardi wonders aloud why Janet Tyler and the others with her deformity can't simply be allowed to be different, the nurse warns him to be careful as he is speaking treason.
* BigGuyLittleGuy: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E57ThePrimeMover The Prime Mover]]", Ace Larson bosses the much larger and nicer Jimbo Cobb around so that he will use his telekinesis to help Ace's gambling. However, Jimbo eventually fakes the loss of his power so that Ace loses and moves on from his {{Greed}}.
* BigotryException: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E106HesAlive He's Alive]]", Peter Vollmer is a committed neo-Nazi but the only thing in the world that he loves is Ernst Ganz, a survivor of UsefulNotes/TheHolocaust. He even says that Ernst is like a father to him. [[SubvertedTrope However]], after Ernst disrupts a public meeting and puts the growth of his organization at risk, Peter murders him at the urging of his MysteriousBenefactor, who turns out to be UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler.
* BinarySuns:
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E20Elegy Elegy]]", the cemetery asteroid Happy Glades' star system has two suns.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E93TheLittlePeople The Little People]]", the planet on which the astronauts William Fletcher and Peter Craig land to repair their ship has two suns.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E118OnThursdayWeLeaveForHome On Thursday We Leave for Home]]", V9-Gamma's star system has two suns. As a result, the planet experiences EndlessDaytime. A young boy named Jo-Jo has no concept of what night is.
* 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 a Good Life]]", Dan Hollis receives a Perry Como record at his surprise birthday party. Although he wants to play it on the Fremonts' record player, the others talk him out of it because of Anthony's hatred of singing. Dan later gets drunk on whisky, another of his presents, and starts making noise, much to Anthony's annoyance. While Pat Reilly is playing "Moonglow" on the piano, Dan starts singing "Happy Birthday" and tries to convince Pat to play the song. However, he is too afraid to do so. Dan finally loses his cool and tells Anthony that he is a monster. He implores the others to attack Anthony from behind but none of them have the courage to do so. Anthony then turns Dan into a jack-in-the-box before sending him to the cornfield.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E95HocusPocusAndFrisby Hocus-Pocus and Frisby]]", Somerset Frisby is [[AlienAbduction abducted by aliens]] on his 63rd birthday. They plan to bring Frisby back to their own planet as the most impressive specimen that humanity has to offer. As [[CannotTellALie they have no concept of lying]], the aliens believe all of his outrageous [[TallTale tall tales]] about his past accomplishments.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E117TheIncredibleWorldOfHoraceFord The Incredible World of Horace Ford]]", the title character is fired from the toy company by Mr. Judson on his 38th birthday after he refuses to take a leave of absence because of his increasingly erratic behavior. That night, Horace returns to Randolph Street where he turns into a 10-year-old boy. His [[WithFriendsLikeThese childhood friends]] then beat him up for not inviting them to his birthday party.
* BittersweetEnding: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E49BackThere Back There]]", Peter Corrigan was never able to stop Abraham Lincoln's assassination, but his actions resulted in the cop who believed him becoming a millionaire, and his descendant William (who in the original timeline was an attendant at a club) inheriting his fortune.
* BizarreAlienBiology:
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E55MrDingleTheStrong Mr. Dingle, the Strong]]", the Martian scientist has two heads while the Venusians have antennae.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E64WillTheRealMartianPleaseStandUp Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?]]", [[spoiler:the Martians have three arms while the Venusians have three eyes]].
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E95HocusPocusAndFrisby Hocus-Pocus and Frisby]]", the aliens have a Venusian specimen who can sing at eight different pitches simultaneously and accompanies himself with his tail.

** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E76StillValley Still Valley]]", Teague uses a book of black magic to [[TimeStandsStill freeze Union soldiers in time]]. He would like to use it to defeat the entire Union Army but he can't as he is dying.
** 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, which then pounces on him.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E120TheBard The Bard]]", a hack writer named Julius Moomer buys a book of black magic called ''Ye Book of Ye Black Arte'' at a second hand bookshop in order to research a pilot script. He accidentally summons the ghost of Creator/WilliamShakespeare, who writes a television film script for him entitled ''The Tragic Cycle''.
* BlandNameProduct: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E126LivingDoll Living Doll]]", Talky Tina is based on the wind-up doll Chatty Cathy and is even voiced by the same actress, Creator/JuneForay.
* BlatantLies: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E89ToServeMan To Serve Man]]", the Kanamits say "There is nothing ulterior in our motives. ''Nothing at all''." It turns out that they're trying to [[spoiler:lure humans to their planet in order to eat them.]]
* BlindDate: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E110Miniature Miniature]]", Charley Parkes' sister Myra Russell sets him up on a blind date with her co-worker Harriet Gunderson as she believes that he needs a girl to bring him out of his shell and make him less introverted. It does not go according to plan as Charley thinks that Harriet is being too forward, accidentally knocking her to the ground when she kisses him.
* BlindMusician: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E97TheGift The Gift]]", the guitarist Ignacio is blind.
* BookEnds: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E103InHisImage In His Image]]", Alan Talbot comes to Jessica Connelly's apartment and jokes that he belongs to the Junior Woodchucks in the first scene after the prologue. In the final scene, Walter Ryder, Jr. does the same thing.
* BornInTheWrongCentury:
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E30AStopAtWilloughby A Stop at Willoughby]]", Gart Williams is not temperamentally suited to the stress that being an advertising executive entails. He begins to dream about an idyllic small town named Willoughby in 1888 where he can live his life full measure at a slower pace. When Gart tells his wife Janie about Willoughby, she retorts that he was born too late and that it was her mistake to marry a man whose ambition in life is to be [[Literature/AdventuresOfHuckleberryFinn Huckleberry Finn]].
** {{Subverted|Trope}} in "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E78OnceUponATime Once Upon a Time]]". Rollo, a scientist from 1962, goes back to 1890 with Mulligan expecting simpler times, only to realize that they also didn't have the simple pleasures of his time such as spring mattresses, TV dinners and bikinis. Mulligan sends him back to 1962 as he has begun to annoy him.
** {{Subverted|Trope}} again in "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E112NoTimeLikeThePast No Time Like the Past]]". After thrice failing to fix history, Paul Driscoll decides to go back to 1881 where none of the modern world's problems exist. After inadvertently causing a fire he intended to stop, he accepts that history has always had disasters none of which he can stop, so he decides to return to his own time and to work to make a better future.

** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E27TheBigTallWish The Big Tall Wish]]", the washed up boxer Bolie Jackson has a comeback fight against Joey Consiglio. After Bolie is knocked down, his young friend Henry Temple makes a [[TitleDrop big tall wish]] for the two boxers to switch places. The wish is granted and Bolie ends up winning the fight. However, Bolie does not believe that a wish could have allowed him to win and its effects are undone.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E122Steel Steel]]", the boxing promoter Steel Kelly, disguised as his malfunctioning B2 robot Battling Maxo, fights a B7 robot in Maynard, Kansas on August 2, 1974.

** At the end of "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E89ToServeMan To Serve Man]]", Michael Chambers directly talks to the audience, asking if "[we're] still on Earth, or on the ship with [him]," following it up by saying, "Really doesn't make very much difference, because sooner or later, all of us will be on the menu... all of us."

* BrownNote: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E95HocusPocusAndFrisby Hocus-Pocus and Frisby]]", [[spoiler:the sound of Somerset Frisby's harmonica paralyzes the aliens with extreme pain and he manages to escape]].
* TheButlerDidIt: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E64WillTheRealMartianPleaseStandUp 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.]]

** "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E42TheEyeOfTheBeholder Eye of the Beholder]]" (aka "A Private World of Darkness")". [[spoiler:What Janet Tyler's surgery is supposed to correct, and everyone else in the episode.]]
** Toyed with in "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E145TheMasks The Masks]]". [[spoiler:Only ''after'' Fosters' relatives remove their masks do they become this.]]

* ButWhatAboutTheAstronauts: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E129Probe7OverAndOut Probe 7, Over and Out]]", Colonel Cook has already crashlanded on the strange planet by the time that the war that destroys his homeworld starts.

* TheCaligula: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E71TheMirror The Mirror]]", as soon as he comes to power, Ramos Clemente proves himself to be extremely irrational, paranoid and blood-thirsty. He sees enemies all around him. As well as ordering mass executions, he becomes convinced that his lieutenants D'Alessandro, Garcia, Tabal and Cristo are plotting against him due to having seemingly foreseen it in the mirror. Clemente throws D'Alessandro off the balcony of his mansion, has Garcia and Tabal executed as enemies of the state and shoots Cristo as he believed that the wine that he offered him was poisoned. [[spoiler:When he looks in the mirror and sees only his own reflection, Clemente shoots himself. His reign lasted for only a week.]]
* CallingYourShots: In the episode "A Game of Pool", Fats and Jesse call their shots in [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin a game of pool.]] The most impressive shot is when Jesse calls the side pocket after bouncing off three banks and making it.
* CameBackWrong: "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E88TheLastRitesOfJeffMyrtlebank The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank]]" plays with this. Although Jeff came back to life, he doesn't seem that off. [[spoiler:But then again, he lit a match without striking it...]]
* CannotTellALie:
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E50TheWholeTruth The Whole Truth]]", after buying the Model A, Harvey Hunnicut finds out to his horror that he can't tell a lie. Since he's a used car dealer who specializes in selling junk cars, his business is ruined. He eventually sells it to UsefulNotes/NikitaKhrushchev.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E95HocusPocusAndFrisby Hocus-Pocus and Frisby]]", the aliens mistake Somerset Frisby's [[TallTale tall tales]] about his own past for an incredible variety of impressive accomplishments because they have no idea what lying is.
* 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.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E78OnceUponATime Once Upon a Time]]", the likewise temporally displaced Woodrow Mulligan sees a man on television, which he mistakes for a window, while in Jack's Fix-It Shop. Believing that the man is talking to him when he warns another character that someone can't be trusted, he becomes concerned that the repairman is up to something. Rollo sets him straight, though Mulligan still does not understand what television is.
** {{Discussed|Trope}} in "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E144WhatsInTheBox What's in the Box]]". Dr. Saltman believes that Joe Britt seeing himself kill his wife Phyllis on television is a delusion caused by an inability to distinguish between TV and his own life.
* CanonForeigner:
** Carling, the villain of "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E14ThirdFromTheSun Third from the Sun]]", does not appear in the short story by Creator/RichardMatheson.
** 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.
** Mrs. Williams, Mrs. Lucas and FBI Agent Hall, the three supporting characters in "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E94FourOClock Four O'Clock]]", do not appear in the short story by Price Day.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E108DeathShip Death Ship]]", Lt. Ted Mason sees his wife Ruth and daughter Jeannie [[spoiler:in the afterlife]] while Lt. Mike Carter sees Kramer and Mrs. Nolan. None of these characters appear in the short story by Creator/RichardMatheson.
** Julia, the wife of the protagonist Bob Wilson in "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E123NightmareAt20000Feet Nightmare at 20,000 Feet]]", does not appear in the short story by Creator/RichardMatheson.
** "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E137Number12LooksJustLikeYou Number 12 Looks Just Like You]]" features three supporting characters who did not appear in the short story "The Beautiful People" by Charles Beaumont: Val, Uncle Rick and Professor Sigmund Friend.
** The ''Film/TwilightZoneTheMovie'' adaptation of "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E86KickTheCan Kick the Can]]" features four major characters who did not appear in the original episode: Mr. Bloom, Mrs. Dempsey and Mr. and Mrs. Weinstein.
** The ComicBookAdaptation of "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E54TheOdysseyOfFlight33 The Odyssey of Flight 33]]" features two passengers who did not appear in the original episode: the parachute exhibitionist Dawson Pinkney and an unnamed [[TheVietnamVet Vietnam veteran]] suffering from PTSD who attempts to force his way into the cockpit and, unaware that the plane has been sent millions of years back in time, later parachutes down to an area populated by dinosaurs.
** In the comic adaptation of "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E34TheAfterHours The After Hours]]", a {{Flashback}} shows that Marsha White befriended an elderly woman who lived in her apartment building during the month that she lived on the outside world. This woman does not appear in the episode.
* CanonSue: InUniverse in "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E85ShowdownWithRanceMcGrew Showdown with Rance McGrew]]". The fictional Marshal Rance [=McGrew=] is the FastestGunInTheWest and a brave and universally admired hero who never loses.
* CantLiveWithThemCantLiveWithoutThem: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E63TheMindAndTheMatter The Mind and the Matter]]", Archibald Beechcroft initially revels in his solitude after he makes everyone else disappear. However, after several hours, he becomes incredibly bored.
* CaptivityHarmonica:
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E62ShadowPlay Shadow Play]]", Coley, one of Adam Grant's fellow prisoners, plays a harmonica in his dream about being on DeathRow. Grant acknowledges that it is a trope, saying that he got Coley and his harmonica from a bad movie that he saw once.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E95HocusPocusAndFrisby Hocus-Pocus and Frisby]]", Somerset Frisby plays his harmonica after being [[AlienAbduction abducted by aliens]]. [[spoiler:[[BrownNote The sound causes them extreme pain]] and he escapes.]]
* CargoCult: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E127TheOldManInTheCave The Old Man in the Cave]]", Major French tells Mr. Goldsmith that there is a cult in what used to be UsefulNotes/{{Chicago}} that worships a statue made of fissionable lead as its god.
* CassandraTruth:

** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E11AndWhenTheSkyWasOpened And When the Sky Was Opened]]", Colonel Clegg Forbes frantically attempts to convince everyone that Colonel Ed Harrington has disappeared and they have all forgotten that he ever existed but to no avail. Major William Gart finally realizes that he was telling the truth when Forbes disappears and he is the only one to remember him.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E49BackThere Back There]]", Peter Corrigan is arrested for disturbing the peace on April 14, 1865 when he goes to Ford's Theatre and starts banging on the stage door and yelling that UsefulNotes/AbrahamLincoln is going to be assassinated during the performance of ''Our American Cousin'' that night. The police believe that he is either drunk or a Union soldier who is emotionally disturbed.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E92PersonOrPersonsUnknown Person or Persons Unknown]]", David Gurney awakes one morning to discover that no one recognizes him or has even heard of him. He desperately tries to convince everyone that he meets of his identity and, in most cases, that they know him very well but without success.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E98TheDummy The Dummy]]", Jerry Etherson desperately tries to convince his agent Frank that his dummy Willie really is alive. At Frank's insistence, he has gone to see numerous psychiatrists and tried to convince them of the same thing but they all diagnosed this belief as a symptom of schizophrenia.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E112NoTimeLikeThePast No Time Like the Past]]", Paul Driscoll attempts to warn a Hiroshima police captain about the impending atomic bombing on August 6, 1945 and the captain of the RMS ''Lusitania'' about its impending sinking by the ''U-20'' on May 7, 1915 but both of them believe that he is insane.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E123NightmareAt20000Feet Nightmare at 20,000 Feet]]", Bob Wilson frantically attempts to convince everyone that there is a gremlin on the wing of the plane but no one believes him. His credibility is severely suspect since he has just been released from a sanatarium after having a nervous breakdown on a plane six months earlier. [[spoiler:[[SubvertedTrope However]], Rod Serling says in his closing narration that the damage to the plane's engine will be discovered and Bob will be vindicated.]]
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E130The7thIsMadeUpOfPhantoms The 7th is Made Up of Phantoms]]", Sgt. William Connors and Private Michael [=McCluskey=], both of whom are extremely knowledgeable about the Battle of Little Bighorn, believe that they have gone back in time to June 25, 1876. Corporal Richard Langsford thinks that it is nothing more than an illusion but he eventually realizes the truth of the situation. When they return to base camp, Captain Dennet does not believe them either but he is later convinced when he sees the three soldiers' names on the Custer Battlefield National Memorial.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E138BlackLeatherJackets Black Leather Jackets]]", Scott tells Ellen Tillman that he is an alien whose race intends to [[GuiltFreeExterminationWar exterminate humanity]] by [[WaterSourceTampering poisoning their water supply with deadly bacteria]]. She does not believe his story and tells her parents Stuart and Martha. Stuart then calls the police to report that Scott is mentally disturbed and needs help. Deputy Sheriff Harper turns out to be an alien and Scott is taken away, presumably to be killed.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E148CaesarAndMe Caesar and Me]]", Jonathan West attempts to prove to his landlady Agnes Cudahy and the police that his ventriloquist's dummy Caesar is alive and convinced him to rob both the delicatessen and the nightclub. However, Caesar refuses to speak in front of them and Jonathan, who is presumed to be insane, is arrested.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E154ComeWanderWithMe Come Wander With Me]]", Mary Rachel is unable to convince Floyd Burney that they have experienced the events surrounding the death of Billy Rayford [[GroundhogDayLoop many times before]].
* {{Catchphrase}}:

** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E124AKindOfAStopwatch A Kind of a Stopwatch]]", Patrick Thomas [=McNulty=] says "You think about that, now" every time that he makes one of his invariably ignored suggestions or observations. Rod Serling says it himself in his opening narration.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E133RingADingGirl Ring-A-Ding Girl]]", Bunny Blake's catchphrase is "Ring-A-Ding!"
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E147SoundsAndSilences Sounds and Silences]]", Roswell G. Flemington says "In a manner of speaking" whenever he uses a sea metaphor. His wife Lydia uses it three times to mock him as she leaves him.

** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E40AThingAboutMachines A Thing About Machines]]", Bartlett Finchley is a misanthropic critic for a gourmet magazine who never misses an opportunity to denigrate people to their faces or humanity in general. He is ultimately [[LaserGuidedKarma destroyed by the very machines that he hates]].
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E87APianoIntheHouse A Piano in the House]]", the drama critic Fitzgerald Fortune is a cruel, callous man. He takes delight in humiliating his much abused wife Esther, his friends Greg Walker and Marge Moore and his butler Marvin by using the piano player to force them to reveal their most private thoughts and feelings. The tables are turned when Esther uses the piano to force Fitzgerald to admit that he is essentially a frightened little boy who lacks emotional maturity.
* CelebrityParadox:
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E56Static Static]]", Vinnie mentions listening to Ed Wynn on the radio in 1940. Wynn previously played Louis J. Bookman in "[[Recap/TheTwilightZone1959S1E2OneForTheAngels One for the Angels]]" and would later play Sam Forstmann in "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E132NinetyYearsWithoutSlumbering Ninety Years Without Slumbering]]".
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E117TheIncredibleWorldOfHoraceFord The Incredible World of Horace Ford]]", Jackie Cooper's name can be seen on the ''O'Shaughnessy's Boys'' film poster in 1935. Cooper later played Jonathan West in "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E148CaesarAndMe Caesar and Me]]".
* CharacterNameAndTheNounPhrase: "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E152MrGarrityAndTheGraves Mr. Garrity and the Graves]]".

* ChekhovsGun: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E136TheSelfImprovementOfSalvadoreRoss The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross]]", the title character mocks Mr. Maitland for displaying his collection of guns on the wall of his apartment as he was injured in UsefulNotes/WorldWarII. [[spoiler:After trading his compassion to Ross for $100,000, Mr. Maitland shoots him with one of those guns.]]

* ChildhoodFriendRomance: {{Deconstructed|Trope}} in "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E141SpurOfTheMoment Spur of the Moment]]". Anne Henderson and David Mitchell were childhood sweethearts who always knew that they would get married when they were older. They were engaged but Anne broke it off and became engaged to the investment banker Robert Blake. However, she has a change of heart and elopes with David on June 13, 1939, in the middle of her engagement party. This proves to be the worst decision of her life as David becomes an abusive alcoholic who bankrupts her family's estate and turns her into an alcoholic as well.
* ChildrenAreInnocent: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E97TheGift The Gift]]", Pedro immediately becomes friends with Williams because, as a mistreated orphan with no friends, he can relate to the stranger. Other than the doctor, he is the only person in Madeiro who believes that Williams is no threat to the village.
* ChristmasEpisode:

** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E102TheChangingOfTheGuard The Changing of the Guard]]", Professor Ellis Fowler, who has taught at the Rock Spring School for Boys for 51 years, is forced to retire at Christmas and plans to commit suicide as he believes that his life has been a failure.
* ChromosomeCasting:
** Numerous episodes of the series have all-male casts, particularly when they have military themes: "[[Recap/TheTwilightZone1959S1E1WhereIsEverybody Where Is Everybody?]]", "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E15IShotAnArrowIntoTheAir I Shot An Arrow Into the Air]]", "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E18TheLastFlight The Last Flight]]", "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E19ThePurpleTestament The Purple Testament]]", "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E20Elegy Elegy]]", "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E61TheSilence The Silence]]", "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E71TheMirror The Mirror]]", "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E76StillValley Still Valley]]", "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E78OnceUponATime Once Upon a Time]]", "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E80AQualityOfMercy A Quality of Mercy]]", "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E85ShowdownWithRanceMcGrew Showdown with Rance McGrew]]", "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E93TheLittlePeople The Little People]]", "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E95HocusPocusAndFrisby Hocus-Pocus and Frisby]]", "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E104TheThirtyFathomGrave The Thirty-Fathom Grave]]", "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E106HesAlive He's Alive]]", "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E122Steel Steel]]", "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E125TheLastNightOfAJockey The Last Night of a Jockey]]" (in which Creator/MickeyRooney was the only actor to appear), "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E130The7thIsMadeUpOfPhantoms The 7th is Made Up of Phantoms]]", "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E151TheEncounter The Encounter]]" and "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E153TheBrainCenterAtWhipples The Brain Center at Whipple's]]". Several of these episodes feature female extras while others have no women on screen at all.
** Jack Klugman and Jonathan Winters are the only actors to appear on screen in "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E70AGameOfPool A Game of Pool]]" but there is a brief voice over from an uncredited female actor during the two scenes set in the afterlife.
** Martin Landau, John van Dreelen and Robert Kelljan are the only actors to appear on screen in "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E149TheJeopardyRoom The Jeopardy Room]]" but the voices of two uncredited actresses are heard in the final scene.
** Conversely, two episodes feature all-female casts with the exception of a brief voice over from a male actor: "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E51TheInvaders The Invaders]]" (in which Creator/AgnesMoorehead is the only actor seen on screen) and "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E139NightCall Night Call]]".
* CigaretteOfAnxiety:
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E39NervousManInAFourDollarRoom Nervous Man in a Four Dollar Room]]", Jackie Rhoades tries to light up to relieve the stress of being called on to kill someone for the first time. He can't because he's out of matches. His reflection, on the other hand, happily puffs away while berating him.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E123NightmareAt20000Feet Nightmare at 20,000 Feet]]", as soon as he takes his seat, Bob Wilson starts to light up a cigarette to calm his nerves. However, his wife Julia reminds him that he can't smoke until the plane has taken off.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E150StopoverInAQuietTown Stopover in a Quiet Town]]", Millie Frazier almost has a breakdown when she and her husband Bob discover that one of the trees outside of the Centerville church is fake. Bob lights up a cigarette for her in order to calm her nerves.
* ClapYourHandsIfYouBelieve: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E132NinetyYearsWithoutSlumbering Ninety Years Without Slumbering]]", Sam Forstmann is convinced that he will die if his grandfather clock, which was given to his parents on the day that he was born, ever winds down as his father and grandfather had always told him as much. He becomes so obsessed with winding the clock that his granddaughter Marnie Kirk and her husband Doug send him to a psychiatrist named Dr. Mel Avery. Shortly afterwards, Sam collapses when the pendulum briefly stops swinging. Several weeks later, Sam's spirit appears to leave his body after the clock winds down. However, he has come to realize that Marnie, Doug and Dr. Avery were right all along. He tells his "spirit" that he doesn't believe in him and therefore he doesn't exist. Sam then tells Marnie that when the old clock wound down for the last time, he was born again.
* ClingyMacGuffin:
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E126LivingDoll Living Doll]]", Erich Streator cannot rid himself of the doll Talky Tina no matter what he tries. He throws it in the trash and it reappears in his stepdaughter Christie's bed. He then attempts to destroy it using a vise, a blowtorch and a circular saw but [[MadeOfIndestructium it is completely undamaged]]. [[spoiler:Erich later trips over Tina on the stairs and falls to his death.]]
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E151TheEncounter The Encounter]]", Fenton tells Arthur Takamori that he took the samurai sword from a Japanese officer whom he was forced to kill on Okinawa in order to save his own life. He claims that it keeps turning up in spite of his numerous attempts to get rid of it over the years. It bears the inscription "The sword will avenge me." As soon as he picks it up, Arthur experiences a strange sensation and says "I'm going to kill him. I'm going to kill him. Why?" He later appears to be come under the supernatural influence of the sword and attacks Fenton with it. From this experience, Arthur realizes that Fenton killed the Japanese officer and took the sword after he had already surrendered. The former owner of the sword eventually has his vengeance when Fenton falls on it and is [[ImpaledWithExtremePrejudice impaled]].
* {{Cloudcuckoolander}}: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E33MrBevis Mr. Bevis]]", Mr. James B.W. Bevis is an eccentric, accident prone man who loves zither music and stuffed animals and drives a 1924 Rickenbacker. He is beloved by the neighborhood children and many other locals but his idiosyncrasies mean that he has had eleven jobs in the last eleven months.
* ComicBookAdaptation:

** "[[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 2009.
* {{Commune}}: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E118OnThursdayWeLeaveForHome On Thursday We Leave for Home]]", in order to keep control over "his" people once they return to Earth, Captain William Benteen intends to obtain a land grant from the US government so they can set up their own community isolated from the outside world. He takes it for granted that the other survivors will follow him unquestionably. However, when Colonel Sloane advises him to discuss the matter with them, Benteen discovers that they all intend to go their separate way and settle in different states. Benteen is devastated.
* CompositeCharacter:
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E14ThirdFromTheSun Third from the Sun]]", William and Eve Sturka have only one child, a daughter named Jody. In the short story by Creator/RichardMatheson, the unnamed equivalent characters have two children.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E20Elegy Elegy]]", Peter Kirby is a composite of four characters from the short story by Charles Beaumont: Lt. Peterson, Chitterwick, Goeblin and Milton.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E119PassageOnTheLadyAnne Passage on the Lady Anne]]", Ian Burgess is a composite of Burgess and Colonel Van Vylman from the short story "Song for a Lady" by Charles Beaumont. In the story, it is Van Vylman who makes the speech lamenting that the ''Lady Anne'''s time has gone due to people spending most of their time rushing about.
* ConspiracyTheorist: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E94FourOClock Four O'Clock]]", Oliver Crangle calls the government to alert them that all the evil people in the United States are going to shrink...
-->'''Crangle:''' ...although that call probably won't even go through. It's my understanding that [[DirtyCommunists the Reds]] are in complete control in [[UsefulNotes/WashingtonDC Washington]] now. They've probably taken over the switchboard too.... It's a complete conspiracy, you know.
* ConvenientlyCoherentThoughts: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E52APennyForYourThoughts A Penny for Your Thoughts]]", Hector B. Poole gains the ability to read minds, and hears a disgruntled bank employee named L.J. Smithers planning to rob the bank. After he denounces him, though, it turns out that Smithers has been idly ''thinking'' about robbing the bank for years, but he'd never actually go through with it.
* ConvenientlyInterruptedDocument: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E97TheGift The Gift]]", an alien who calls himself Williams brings a message to humanity. Williams is killed and the message is burned. Then the doctor reads the message, which says "Greetings to the people of Earth. [[WeComeInPeace We come as friends and in peace]]. We bring you this gift. The following chemical formula is...[[CureForCancer a vaccine against all forms of cancer]]..." The rest is burned away.
* CoolOldLady: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E156TheBewitchinPool The Bewitchin' Pool]]", Aunt T is a sweet, kind-hearted elderly woman who adores children and is endlessly patient with them. Her realm is a paradise for children such as Sport and Jeb Sharewood whose parents are neglectful and do not deserve them. Although the children have to do chores, they spend a great deal of their time playing and helping Aunt T to make cakes.
* CoolTeacher: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E102TheChangingOfTheGuard The Changing of the Guard]]", Professor Ellis Fowler is a well respected and excellent teacher. Although he is a bit sarcastic, he means it in good fun. His students call him [[InsultOfEndearment "Old]] [[AffectionateNickname Weirdbeard"]]; Fowler knows about this and is proud of the nickname.

* CrazyMemory: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E95HocusPocusAndFrisby Hocus-Pocus and Frisby]]", Somerset Frisby tells outrageous lies to his friends about his past... and is promptly kidnapped by aliens, who think his lies are true.
* CreatorCameo: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E92PersonOrPersonsUnknown Person or Persons Unknown]]", the patient who believes himself to be UsefulNotes/WinstonChurchill is played by the director John Brahm.
* CreepyChild:
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E29NightmareAsAChild Nightmare as a Child]]", Markie is a strange, demanding child with a deadly serious manner. She tells Helen Foley that she knows every detail of her life. [[spoiler:It turns out that Markie, a manifestation of Helen's RepressedMemories concerning the murder of her mother by Peter Selden, has good intentions but she is still creepy.]]
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E73ItsAGoodLife It's a Good Life]]", the six-year-old Anthony Fremont has [[RealityWarper extensive powers]] which allow him to read people's minds and make those who are not thinking nice things about him to disappear. As such, everyone in Peaksville, UsefulNotes/{{Ohio}}, including his parents Bill and Agnes, lives in mortal fear of him.
* CreepyChildrenSinging: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E29NightmareAsAChild Nightmare as a Child]]", Helen Foley hears Markie creepily singing "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" in her mind.

** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E7TheLonely The Lonely]]", James A. Corry was convicted of murder but claims that he killed in self-defense. He is eventually pardoned.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E146IAmTheNightColorMeBlack I am the Night - Color Me Black]]", Jagger killed a racist man in self-defense, which the presence of powder burns on the victim's body indicated. However, a committee of townspeople convinced Sheriff Koch to ignore this evidence. Koch did so as he wanted to be re-elected sheriff. Jagger was therefore convicted of murder and is executed on the morning of May 25, 1964.
* CruelAndUnusualDeath: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E71TheMirror The Mirror]]", Ramos Clemente intends to have his predecessor General De Cruz put to death by being covered with honey and eaten alive by ants. [[WhatHappenedToTheMouse Whether he went through with it is never revealed.]]

** "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E99YoungMansFancy Young Man's Fancy]]" opens with newlywed couple Alex and Virginia Walker preparing Alex's late mother's house to sell. However, Alex becomes so engrossed in childhood memories that Virginia feels she is competing with his mother for his attention. [[spoiler:At the end of the episode, Alex has regressed to childhood and his mother has returned from the dead, and both of them dismiss Virginia.]]

** "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E148CaesarAndMe Caesar and Me]]" features ventriloquist Jonathan West, whose dummy, Caesar, has a mind of his own and persuades him to turn from their unsuccessful stage act to a life of crime. One such conversation is overheard by Susan, a little girl in the same boarding house as Jonathan who taunts him for his lack of professional success. [[spoiler:After overhearing a second conversation, Susan tips off the police about Jonathan and Caesar's crime spree, and when Jonathan tries to get Caesar to confess, Caesar remains silent, leading the police to suspect Jonathan has lost his mind. He gives himself up and is led away, at which point Caesar turns his attention to recruiting Susan as a partner in crime.]]
* TheCuckoolanderWasRight: [[spoiler:In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E64WillTheRealMartianPleaseStandUp Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?]]", Avery accuses Mr. Ross of being the "most suspicious of the bunch." He 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: "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E70AGameOfPool 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.
* CulturePolice:
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E65TheObsoleteMan The Obsolete Man]]", the State has banned all books, which leads to the librarian Romney Wordsworth being declared obsolete.
** 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.
* CurbStompBattle: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E88TheLastRitesOfJeffMyrtlebank The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank]]", when Orgram Gatewood warns him to stay away from his sister Comfort, the title character manages to beat him up with little effort. Before Jeff's death and resurrection, Orgram had been whupping him ever since they were children.
* CureForCancer: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E97TheGift The Gift]]", Williams came to Earth in order to provide humanity with a vaccine against all forms of cancer.
* CutPhoneLines: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E155TheFear The Fear]]", Charlotte Scott and Robert Franklin attempt to phone for help after discovering evidence that Earth is seemingly being invaded by giant aliens but they are unable to do so as the phone lines have been cut.

** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E81NothingInTheDark Nothing in the Dark]]", [[spoiler:Death takes the form of Harold Beldon, a young cop who is injured outside of the apartment of a reclusive elderly woman named Wanda Dunn in order to show her that dying is nothing to be afraid of.]]
* DastardlyWhiplash: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E110Miniature Miniature]]", the doll girl's suitor resembles this type of villain, complete with cartoonishly evil mannerisms and musical cues.

** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E6EscapeClause Escape Clause]]", the [[{{Hypochondria}} severe hypochondric]] Walter Bedeker makes a deal with the Devil, calling himself Mr. Cadwallader, for {{Immortality}} in exchange for his soul.
** {{Subverted|Trope}} in "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E76StillValley Still Valley]]". Making a deal with the Devil is necessary to access all of the spells in the warlock Teague's book of BlackMagic. However, the Confederate soldier Sgt. Joseph Paradine burns the book as he would rather let the Confederacy die and be buried in hallowed ground than renounce Main/{{God}}.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E109JessBelle Jess-Belle]]", after buying a LovePotion from Granny Hart, Jess-Belle Stone learns that her soul has been extinguished and that she has been become a witch.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E111PrintersDevil Printer's Devil]]", Douglas Winter, the editor of the failing newspaper ''The Dansburg Courier'', hires a reporter and linotype operator named Mr. Smith, who lends him $5,000 to keep the paper going. Winter eventually discovers that Smith is the Devil who wants his soul in exchange for saving the newspaper.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E116OfLateIThinkOfCliffordville Of Late I Think of Cliffordville]]", William J. Feathersmith is approached by the Devil in the form of a beautiful young woman named Miss Devlin. She agrees to send him back to his home town of Cliffordville, Indiana in 1910 with all of his memories of the intervening 53 years intact in exchange for $1,412.14. Feathersmith initially believes that the price will be his soul but Miss Devlin reveals that his unscrupulous business practises mean that he is already going to Main/{{Hell}}.
* DeathByAdaptation:
** At the end of the radio adaptation of "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E94FourOClock Four O'Clock]]", [[spoiler:the shrunken Oliver Crangle is killed and eaten by his parrot Pete as he has mistaken him for a nut]].
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E119PassageOnTheLadyAnne Passage on the Lady Anne]]", Ian Burgess' wife Cynthia died several weeks before the ''Lady Anne'''s last voyage. In the short story "Song for a Lady" by Charles Beaumont, she is still alive and accompanies him on the cruise. This change is as a result of Burgess' character [[CompositeCharacter being merged]] with Colonel Van Vylman.
* DeathFromAbove: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E118OnThursdayWeLeaveForHome On Thursday We Leave for Home]]", the V9-Gamma survivors are forced to take shelter from a meteor storm in a large cavern after the funeral of the woman [[DrivenToSuicide who committed suicide]]. The rescue ship ''Galaxy 6'' arrives as soon as the storm is over.
* DeathOfAChild: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E134YouDrive You Drive]]", Oliver Pope kills a 12-year-old boy named Timmy Danbers in a hit-and-run accident.

** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E44TheLatenessOfTheHour The Lateness of the Hour]]", Jana Loren discovers that she is actually a robot. Unable to cope, she goes mad and her "parents" reprogram her as a maid, effectively destroying her personality.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E137Number12LooksJustLikeYou Number 12 Looks Just Like You]]", it's revealed that the Transformation is one of these when the formerly free-spirited and rebellious Marilyn Cuberle is forced to go through the process and becomes an empty-headed conformist who loves being pretty more than anything else.
* DeathTrap: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E149TheJeopardyRoom The Jeopardy Room]]", Commissar Vassiloff traps Major Ivan Kuchenko in a hotel room with a hidden explosive booby trap. If Kuchenko finds the bomb in time, he will be allowed to go free. If not, he will die when it detonates. [[spoiler:Kuchenko eventually determines that Vassiloff has connected the bomb to the telephone and has rigged it to explode when it rings and someone picks up the receiver. After escaping from the hotel room, Kuchenko rings the phone. Vassiloff's assistant Boris absentmindedly answers the phone and both of them are killed in the resulting explosion.]]
* DeceasedParentsAreTheBest: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E137Number12LooksJustLikeYou Number 12 Looks Just Like You]]", Marilyn Cuberle deeply loved her father Jack, who [[DrivenToSuicide committed suicide five years earlier]], and bases her decision not to undergo the Transformation on what he taught her about individuality and inner beauty.
* DeliberateValuesDissonance: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E112NoTimeLikeThePast No Time Like the Past]]", Hanford, one of Paul Driscoll's fellow boarders in Homeville, Indiana in 1881, expounds at length on his views regarding American imperialism at dinner. He believes that the United States will remain isolated and weak if it does not expand its sphere of influence by conquering the Orient and UsefulNotes/{{Australia}} before going back across the Pacific to UsefulNotes/SouthAmerica. Hanford repeatedly says that they must plant the American flag as they go. He also believes that the US government was too conciliatory to the UsefulNotes/NativeAmericans during the Indian Wars five years earlier, describing them as "savages" and "Redskins" who [[GuiltFreeExterminationWar should have been wiped out]] by 20 George Custers leading 100,000 men.
* DemonicPossession: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E109JessBelle Jess-Belle]]", the vengeful spirit of Jess-Belle Stone possesses her love rival Ellwyn Glover soon after her wedding to Billy-Ben Turner.

** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E8TimeEnoughAtLast Time Enough at Last]]", Henry Bemis may be the last survivor in the aftermath of the nuclear war.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E127TheOldManInTheCave The Old Man in the Cave]]", a nuclear war devastated Earth in 1964, killing millions of people in the process. Major French tells Mr. Goldsmith that there are approximately 500 people alive between Buffalo, New York and Atlanta, Georgia. In the ten years since the war, many people have died as a result of eating food contaminated with Strontium-90 or from the plague.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E129Probe7OverAndOut Probe 7, Over and Out]]", Colonel Cook's people are wiped out in a devastating war within less than a day. The entire coast of Cook's country was destroyed in only 12 minutes, after which they responded in kind.
* DestinationDefenestration: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E144WhatsInTheBox What's in the Box]]", during his [[DomesticAbuse brutal attack]] on his wife Phyllis, Joe Britt punches her in front of an open window and she falls to her death. Although he had not intended to kill her, the glimpses of the future shown on his television indicate that he will be convicted of murder and executed for his crime.
* {{Determinator}}:
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E83DeadMansShoes Dead Man's Shoes]]", the dead gangster Dane will not let even death stop him from getting revenge on his treacherous partner Bernie Dagget, even if his shoes have to be worn by host after host after host.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E122Steel Steel]]", Steel Kelly never concedes that his boxing robot Battling Maxo should be retired, despite Maxo's condition having remained at the breaking point for three years and robotics having continued to advance in that time. When Maxo breaks down, he goes into the ring himself and gets beaten practically to a pulp trying to earn repair money.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E128UncleSimon Uncle Simon]]", Barbara Polk is so determined to get her hands on her uncle Simon's money that she sees to his every need for 25 years in spite of the fact that he berated her and insulted at every opportunity. [[spoiler:However, Simon has the last laugh since he stipulated in his will that she is to take care of all of his experiments, including a robot with the same personality as him.]]
* DevilInDisguise: The Devil usually appears in the guise of a regular person. In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E41TheHowlingMan The Howling Man]]", he appears to be some poor guy who's been imprisoned by the mad Brotherhood of Truth, but when David Ellington takes pity and releases him, his horns and tail reappear.
* DiesDifferentlyInAdaptation:
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E76StillValley Still Valley]]", Teague dies off-screen of natural causes. In the short story "The Valley Was Still" by Creator/ManlyWadeWellman, Sgt. Joseph Paradine decapitates him with his saber after he suggests using the book of BlackMagic to defeat the Union.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E137Number12LooksJustLikeYou Number 12 Looks Just Like You]]", Marilyn Cuberle's father Jack committed suicide as he bitterly regretted undergoing the Transformation and his family covered up his death by claiming that he was killed in the Ganymede Incident. In the short story "The Beautiful People" by Charles Beaumont, he did die in the Ganymede Incident.
* DirtyOldMan: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E53TwentyTwo Twenty-Two]]", the doctor is very lecherous, telling his patient Liz Powell, a [[InsistentTerminology professional dancer]], that she makes an old doctor wish that he were a young intern. He then laughs creepily. As she is leaving the hospital, he says that he hopes that she will be performing the next time that he sees her and that she will throw a wink in his direction.
* DiscoveringYourOwnDeadBody: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E108DeathShip Death Ship]]", Captain Paul Ross, Lt. Ted Mason and Lt. Mike Carter discover their own bodies in a crashed duplicate of their ship, the E-89, shortly after landing on the thirteenth planet of Star System 51. [[spoiler:Mason and Carter eventually accept that they are dead but Ross refuses to do so and they remain trapped in a GroundhogDayLoop for all eternity.]]
* DisposingOfABody: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E115TheNewExhibit The New Exhibit]]", after his wife Emma is killed by UsefulNotes/JackTheRipper's knife, Martin Senescu buries her body under the basement floor.
* DisproportionateRetribution:
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E8TimeEnoughAtLast Time Enough at Last]]", Henry Bemis is InnocentlyInsensitive and inattentive at work due to his obsession with reading. AfterTheEnd, he finds a public library with more books than he could ever read but his glasses are broken before he can even read a single word.

* DittoAliens: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E89ToServeMan To Serve Man]]", the Kanamits are all identical in appearance. The ambassador has a goatee and white robes to distinguish him from the others.
* DivideAndConquer: [[spoiler:In the final scene of "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E22TheMonstersAreDueOnMapleStreet The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street]]", it is revealed that aliens were responsible for shutting off all of the power on Maple Street. Within hours, the residents of the street turn on each other and start rioting. The aliens have previously conducted many similar experiments and the result is always the same. Their overall plan is to travel to numerous small communities one by one and gradually cause humanity to destroy itself.]]
* DivingSave: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E100ISingTheBodyElectric I Sing the Body Electric]]", the robot grandmother pushes Anne Rogers out of the way of an oncoming car and is hit herself. [[spoiler:She gets better.]]
* DivineIntervention: Possibly in "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E146IAmTheNightColorMeBlack I am the Night - Color Me Black]]". The Sun fails to rise on the day of Jagger's execution, and, [[spoiler:once Jagger's been hanged, the darkness starts spreading elsewhere]].
* DoesNotKnowHisOwnStrength: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E93TheLittlePeople The Little People]]", [[spoiler:one of the giant spacemen accidentally crushes Peter Craig to death when he picks him up to examine him. He feels guilty about it.]]
* DomesticAbuse:
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E125TheLastNightOfAJockey The Last Night of a Jockey]]", Michael Grady threatens to slap his old girlfriend's face off when she refuses to go on a date with him now that he is big.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E131AShortDrinkFromACertainFountain A Short Drink from a Certain Fountain]]", Flora Gordon verbally abuses her much older husband Harmon at every opportunity, belittling him over his age and correspondingly slower lifestyle. She mockingly refers to him as "Big Daddy" and says that if they ever visited UsefulNotes/{{Egypt}}, she might leave him for a mummy. Harmon says himself that she can barely stand to be around him but he tolerates her treatment of him as he loves her deeply.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E141SpurOfTheMoment Spur of the Moment]]", in 1964, David Mitchell is verbally abusive towards his long-suffering wife Anne and takes delight in mocking her for [[MarryForLove marrying him for love]] 25 years earlier, which she now bitterly regrets.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E152MrGarrityAndTheGraves Mr. Garrity and the Graves]]", the town drunk Gooberman's wife Zelda broke his arm six times. [[spoiler:After she returns from the dead, she plans to do so again.]]

** "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E81NothingInTheDark 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.]]

* DotingGrandparent: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E58LongDistanceCall Long Distance Call]]", the extremely frail Grandma Bayles adores her grandson Billy. She gives him a toy telephone for his fifth birthday so that he will always be able to talk to her on it. She dies later that day, after mistaking Billy for her son (and his father) Chris. She begins to [[PhoneCallFromTheDead communicate with him over the toy phone from beyond the grave]] and convinces Billy to commit suicide so that they can be TogetherInDeath. When Billy is on the brink of death after being found face down in the family pond, Chris talks to his mother over the toy phone and persuades her to let Billy live if she really loves him.
* DoubleMeaningTitle: "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E111PrintersDevil Printer's Devil]]" refers to both the Devil (as Mr. Smith) being employed as the reporter and linotype operator of ''The Dansburg Courier'' and an old term for a printer's apprentice.
* DownTheRabbitHole: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E156TheBewitchinPool The Bewitchin' Pool]]", Sport and Jeb Sharewood are able to enter Aunt T's realm [[PortalPool through a portal in their swimming pool]] which can't be seen by their parents Gil and Gloria. In the past, other children have been able to travel there through chimneys or by going through doors.

* DramaticUnmask: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E145TheMasks The Masks]]", [[spoiler:the Harpers - Emily, Wilfred, Sr., Wilfred, Jr. and Paula - remove their masks to find that their faces now match the grotesque features of said masks. Later, Dr. Sam Thorne removes Jason's mask. He has retained his normal face but it has an expression of contentment in death.]]
* DreamApocalypse: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E62ShadowPlay Shadow Play]]", the District Attorney Henry Ritchie and newspaper editor Paul Carson become concerned that Adam Grant is telling the truth and they will cease to exist when he is executed as their reality is nothing more than his dream. [[spoiler:It turns out that their fears are justified.]]
* DreamingOfThingsToCome: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E53TwentyTwo Twenty-Two]]", Liz Powell, who is in hospital for exhaustion, has a recurring nightmare in which she wakes up in her hospital room, accidentally breaks a glass of water and hears the sound of footsteps in the corridor. The footsteps belong to a nurse. Liz then takes an elevator down to the basement and arrives at the morgue, Room 22. The nurse comes out and says, "Room for one more, honey." Liz's doctor and her agent Barney Kamener try to convince her that it is nothing more than a delusion. After Liz is released from hospital, she is going to fly to Miami Beach for her next gig. However, she is startled when she is told that she will be flying on Flight 22. In her confusion, Liz bumps into a woman and breaks the vase that she is carrying, just as she broke the glass in her nightmare. As she prepares to board the plane, she notices that the stewardess is identical to the nurse. She says, "Room for one more, honey." Liz screams and races to the terminal. The plane takes off but explodes within seconds.
* 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.
** {{Discussed|Trope}} in "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E79FiveCharactersInSearchOfAnExit Five Characters in Search of an Exit]]". The bagpiper speculates that they are nothing more than characters in someone else's dream.
* DrippingDisturbance: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E147SoundsAndSilences Sounds and Silences]]", Roswell G. Flemington is disturbed by the sound of water dripping in the middle of the night. This is the first indication that every sound has been magnified.
* DrivenToSuicide:
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E102TheChangingOfTheGuard The Changing of the Guard]]", after being forced to retire by the board of the Rock Spring School for Boys, Professor Ellis Fowler becomes convinced that he has accomplished nothing in his life and plans to shoot himself. However, the ghosts of seven of his former students intervene and assure him that his teachings made a real difference in their lives.
** [[spoiler:The fate of Chief Bell in "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E104TheThirtyFathomGrave The Thirty-Fathom Grave]]". Seeing ghosts of his dead crewmates from a sunken submarine which he served on in World War II and experiencing massive SurvivorGuilt, Bell flings himself off the side of the ship and drowns.]]
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E118OnThursdayWeLeaveForHome On Thursday We Leave for Home]]", nine people have committed suicide in the last six months in order to escape the hellish conditions of V9-Gamma.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E131AShortDrinkFromACertainFountain A Short Drink from a Certain Fountain]]", Harmon Gordon has reached the point where he is contemplating suicide as he is madly in love with his much younger wife Flora but she can't stand to be around him. He tells his brother Raymond that he will jump off the balcony if he does not inject him with the experimental youth serum.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E137Number12LooksJustLikeYou Number 12 Looks Just Like You]]", Marilyn Cuberle's father Jack committed suicide five years earlier as he believed that the Transformation had robbed him of his identity.

* DrunkDriver: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E150StopoverInAQuietTown Stopover in a Quiet Town]]", Millie Frazier had several drinks at a party and drives drunk. Her husband Bob, who was far more drunk than she was, was passed out in the back seat. [[spoiler:On the way home, they are [[AlienAbduction abducted by a giant alien]] and taken to another planet to be his daughter's [[HumanPet pets]].]]
* DumbBlonde: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E52APennyForYourThoughts A Penny for Your Thoughts]]", Hector B. Poole hears the thoughts of anyone standing near him. When tries to read the mind of a blonde woman in the bank, [[BrainlessBeauty he can't hear anything.]]
* DutchAngle:

** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E9PerchanceToDream Perchance to Dream]]", the carnival DreamSequence features them prominently.
** "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E14ThirdFromTheSun Third from the Sun]]" makes extensive use of Dutch angles.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E17TheFever The Fever]]", one is used for a shot of Franklin Gibbs at the slot machine after he's become obsessed and screamed at his wife Flora to leave him alone.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E22TheMonstersAreDueOnMapleStreet The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street]]", there are multiple such shots in the final scene when the residents of Maple Street go berserk and start rioting.
** They are used throughout "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E41TheHowlingMan The Howling Man]]".
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E70AGameOfPool A Game of Pool]]", two are used during tense moments in the pool game.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E74DeathsHeadRevisited Deaths-Head Revisited]]", numerous Dutch angle shots are used during Gunter Lütze's trial at Dachau.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E91LittleGirlLost Little Girl Lost]]", they are used throughout the sequence set in the other dimension.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E98TheDummy The Dummy]]", they are used extensively after Jerry Etherson starts hearing Willie and seeing his shadow while leaving the theater.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E107Mute Mute]]", several such shots are used when Miss Frank tries to force Ilse Nielsen into saying her name in front of her class for the first time.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E108DeathShip Death Ship]]", one is used to represent the E-89 being thrown off-course by Lt. Mike Carter's attempt to prevent Captain Paul Ross from landing the ship again.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E113TheParallel The Parallel]]", several are used to represent Gaines' disorientiation upon hearing radio signals immediately before he is sent back to his own universe.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E116OfLateIThinkOfCliffordville Of Late I Think of Cliffordville]]", multiple Dutch angles are used during the sequence in which William J. Feathersmith unsuccessfully tries to convince the people of Cliffordville, Indiana to invest in his ideas for new inventions in 1910, all of which are commonly available in 1963.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E121InPraiseOfPip In Praise of Pip]]", multiple Dutch angles are used during both the GoodTimesMontage of Max and Pip Phillips in the amusement park and their subsequent confrontation in the HallOfMirrors.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E140FromAgnesWithLove From Agnes - With Love]]", one is used in the opening scene in which James Elwood and his supervisor find Fred Danziger frantically arguing with Agnes.

** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E91LittleGirlLost Little Girl Lost]]", the other dimension to which Tina Miller is sent is a bizarre, abstract realm which distorts perceptions. For instance, Tina's father Chris believed that he was standing upright in spite of the fact that his legs were still on the other side of the portal.

* ElectronicSpeechImpediment: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E128UncleSimon Uncle Simon]]", the robot repeatedly says "According to plan" soon after it is first activated.
* EmergencyBroadcast: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E68TheShelter The Shelter]]", the Stocktons and their neighbors learn from a CONELRAD broadcast that unidentified objects believed to be missiles have been detected heading towards the United States. [[spoiler:A later CONELRAD broadcast reveals that they were satellites which pose no danger.]]
* EmergingFromTheShadows: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E106HesAlive He's Alive]]", Peter Vollmer's MysteriousBenefactor, who has advised him on how to increase his neo-Nazi group's support, emerges from the shadows and it is revealed that he is none other than UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler.
* EmptyPilesOfClothing:
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E24LongLiveWalterJameson Long Live Walter Jameson]]", the more than 2,000-year-old title character is shot by Laurette Bowen, one of the many wives that he has abandoned over the centuries. He rapidly ages and turns to dust. Professor Samuel Kittridge and his daughter Susanna find nothing but an empty pile of clothes on the floor of Walter's study.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E143QueenOfTheNile Queen of the Nile]]", Jordan Herrick quickly turns to dust, leaving only his clothes, after Pamela Morris steals his LifeEnergy using a [[ScarabPower scarab beetle]] in order to maintain her eternal youth and beauty.
* 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.]]
* EndlessDaytime: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E75TheMidnightSun The Midnight Sun]]", Earth's elliptical orbit suddenly changed and it is moving closer and closer towards UsefulNotes/TheSun. After a month, there is no darkness and humanity is facing imminent extinction due to the heat. [[spoiler:It turns out that this is a [[FeverDreamEpisode fever dream]] being experienced by Norma. In reality, the Earth is [[EndlessWinter moving further away from the Sun]] and the world has at most three weeks before it freezes to death.]]
* EnfantTerrible: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E148CaesarAndMe Caesar and Me]]", Susan is an evil little girl who takes delight in tormenting and insulting Jonathan West at every opportunity. After she overhears him arguing with Caesar about robbing the nightclub, she reports him to the police. Susan does so out of sheer vindictiveness as opposed to it being the right thing to do. When Caesar speaks in front of her, she plans to keep it to herself even though it could prove that Jonathan is perfectly sane. It takes very little effort on Caesar's part to convince Susan to run away with him. It is even implied that she will kill her aunt Agnes Cudahy in order to escape her.
* 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.
* EpisodeOnAPlane:
** "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E54TheOdysseyOfFlight33 The Odyssey of Flight 33]]" takes place entirely on Global Airlines Flight 33.
** "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E123NightmareAt20000Feet Nightmare at 20,000 Feet]]" takes place on a plane with a gremlin on its wing.
* EquivalentExchange:
** In the final scene of "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E98TheDummy The Dummy]]", [[spoiler:Jerry Etherson and Willie have switched places so that Jerry has become the dummy and Willie the ventriloquist. In his closing narration, Rod Serling says that he has gone from "boss to blockhead."]]
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E113TheParallel The Parallel]]", Major Robert Gaines loses contact with Earth and is accidentally transported to a parallel universe in which he is a colonel. At the end of the episode, shortly after he returns home, the space program receives a transmission from Colonel Robert Gaines.
* EvenEvilHasStandards: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E116OfLateIThinkOfCliffordville Of Late I Think of Cliffordville]]", Miss Devlin is a manipulative devil, and ordinarily maintains a charming persona when dealing with William J. Feathersmith. However, during her final [[TheReasonYouSuckSpeech dressing down]] of Feathersmith and his faults, she allows herself to slip into some genuine anger.
** Evil might be too strong a word for the eponymous Twilight Zone, but it is an unquestionably chaotic and capricious force that has visited misfortune on none too few of its...guests. That said, it has occasionally shown absolutely no mercy whatsoever when someone who has fallen under its influence is an undeniable monster, such as Gunter Lütze of "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E74DeathsHeadRevisited Death's Head Revisited]]".

* EvilCannotComprehendGood: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E82OneMorePallbearer One More Pallbearer]]", Paul Radin sets up a fake nuclear war scenario and expects Mrs. Langsford, Reverend Hughes and Colonel Hawthorne, who all of whom humiliated him in the past, to apologize to him in exchange for their lives. He seems mystified that they would rather spend their last moments with their loved ones than try to save themselves.
* EvilDebtCollector: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E121InPraiseOfPip In Praise of Pip]]", the gangster Moran has one of his henchmen beat up George Reynold, who owes him $300, after Max Phillips took pity on George and allowed him to keep his money.
* EvilDetectingDog:
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E84TheHunt 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!"

* EvilLaugh: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E149TheJeopardyRoom The Jeopardy Room]]", the Soviet commissar Vassiloff uses a particularly nasty laugh at the end of the taped message that he leaves for the defector Major Ivan Kuchenko.
* EvilMask: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E145TheMasks The Masks]]", the dying Jason Foster forces his daughter Emily Harper, son-in-law Wilfred, Sr. and grandchildren Wilfred, Jr. and Paula to wear grotesque masks on Mardi Gras. If they don't, [[OnOneCondition they will not inherit any of his vast fortune]]. The masks were created by an old Cajun and are imbued with certain properties. Jason tells his relatives that it is a Mardi Gras custom to wear masks that are the antithesis of one's true personality. However, all of the masks reflect the personalities of the wearer: the cowardly Emily, the self-obsessed Paula, the miserly Wilfred, Sr. and the dull-witted Wilfred, Jr. [[spoiler:When they take the masks off at midnight, they find that their faces have been transformed so that they now match the masks. Their appearance therefore finally reflects their true personalities.]]
* ExactEavesdropping: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E52APennyForYourThoughts A Penny for Your Thoughts]]", using his newfound powers of {{Telepathy}}, Hector B. Poole hears Mr Sykes thinking that he plans to use his $200,000 loan to bet on horses so that he can win back the money that he has embezzled. He later learns that Mr. Smithers plans to rob the bank and go to UsefulNotes/{{Bermuda}}, though this turns out to be nothing but a fantasy that Smithers has on an almost daily basis.
* ExactWords: To ''Serve'' Man. Also from [[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E89ToServeMan the titular episode]], the Kanamit ambassador, when subjected to a polygraph test, states that he sincerely ''hopes humanity will believe'' that their motives are benevolent, not that said motives actually ''are''.
* ExplosiveStupidity: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E149TheJeopardyRoom The Jeopardy Room]]", [[spoiler:Commissar Vassiloff and his assistant Boris are killed when Boris absentmindedly answers the phone that Vassiloff has turned into a bomb]].
* ExpositionOfImmortality: In the episode "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E24LongLiveWalterJameson Long Live Walter Jameson]]", the titular character is a history professor who knows his stuff, has a close friend and colleague named Professor Samuel Kittridge who comments on his appearance and who is seen in an [[UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar American Civil War]] period picture, revealing just how he knows that period so very well.
* FaceDeathWithDignity: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E145TheMasks The Masks]]", Jason Foster accepts his impending death with calm and dignity. After he dies, Dr. Sam Thorne notes that he has an expression of peace and contentment.
* FailedExecutionNoSentence: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E48Dust Dust]]", Luís Gallegos survives his execution by hanging because the rope breaks at the precise moment that he falls. This is the moment that everybody in town decides (on top of everything else that has happened throughout the episode that was making them undecided about whether following through with this whole charade was actually a good idea) to let him go.
* FakeOutOpening: "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E85ShowdownWithRanceMcGrew Showdown with Rance McGrew]]" begins with what appears to be two cowboys in TheWildWest discussing whether a man will show up, seemingly for a gunfight. Rance [=McGrew=] then drives up in his Ford Thunderbird with longhorns, revealing that the cowboys were actors who were wondering when the star of the show was going to turn up for shooting.
* FakingTheDead: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E143QueenOfTheNile Queen of the Nile]]", on the last day of shooting for the SilentMovie version of ''Queen of the Nile'' in about 1920, Constance Taylor was supposedly killed in a cave-in in UsefulNotes/{{Egypt}}. In reality, the immortal woman faked her death. She had re-emerged as the stage actress Gladys Gregory by 1923 and assumed her latest identity of Pamela Morris by 1935.
* FalseFlagOperation: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E106HesAlive He's Alive]]", the neo-Nazi Peter Vollmer has his lackey Nick Bloss murdered on the advice of UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler and blames it on his enemies in order to attract more support to his growing organization.

* FantasticAnthropologist: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E55MrDingleTheStrong Mr. Dingle, the Strong]]", both the Martians and the Venusians conduct experiments on Luther Dingle to see how he'll react when he gains SuperStrength and then SuperIntelligence.
* FantasyForbiddingFather: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E90TheFugitive The Fugitive]]", Mrs. Gann shows hints of this during this exchange with Jenny:

* FateWorseThanDeath: "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E124AKindOfAStopwatch A Kind of a Stopwatch]]" ends with [[spoiler:the entire world except for [=McNulty=] being frozen in time forever, when the stopwatch breaks.]]
* FatteningTheVictim: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E89ToServeMan To Serve Man]]", Michael Chambers discovers the alien Kanamits eat the humans they take to their planet as "ambassadors", he is taken prisoner aboard their ship. In the last scene, a Kamamit is exhorting him to eat his dinner. More terrifying is the idea that ''everything the Kanamits did'' was a form of this--they put nitrates in the soil to end world hunger and shared technologies that made weaponry obsolete, which removed all of humanity's problems and allowed them to become fat and complacent, like cattle.
* FeverDreamEpisode: [[spoiler:In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E75TheMidnightSun The Midnight Sun]]", the world moving closer towards UsefulNotes/TheSun turns out to be nothing but a fever dream being experienced by Norma. In reality, the world is moving further away from it.]]
* FictionalSport: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E137Number12LooksJustLikeYou Number 12 Looks Just Like You]]", Marilyn Cuberle mentions electronic baseball and super soccer.
* FingerSnapLighter:
** In the final scene of "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E88TheLastRitesOfJeffMyrtlebank The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank]]", the title character demonstrates this ability when he lights a match without striking it. He tells his fiancée Comfort Gatewood that it was just her imagination.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E111PrintersDevil Printer's Devil]]", Mr. Smith, being the Devil, has the ability to create fire. He snaps his fingers to light his cigar while Douglas Winter isn't looking.

* FixingTheGame: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E61TheSilence The Silence]]", [[spoiler:as he knew that he couldn't remain silent for a year, Jamie Tennyson hoped to ensure that he would win the bet by having surgery to have his vocal cords severed. Since Colonel Taylor is broke, it ends up not making a difference.]]
* TheFlapper: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E45TheTroubleWithTempleton The Trouble with Templeton]]", Booth Templeton's late wife Laura was one during TheRoaringTwenties.
* FlawedPrototype: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E103InHisImage In His Image]]", Walter Ryder, Jr. shows Alan Talbot the two failed prototypes in his quest to create an android: Alan Talbot 1 and Alan Talbot 2. It turns out that Alan is flawed himself due to his frequent homicidal urges.

** In the final scene of "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E54TheOdysseyOfFlight33 The Odyssey of Flight 33]]", [[spoiler:it appears that Flight 33 is destined to become a time traveling Flying Dutchman as it is uncertain whether its next attempt to return to 1961 will be successful, especially since its fuel is running low.]]
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E67TheArrival The Arrival]]", Flight 107 mysteriously disappeared in a thick fog in the early 1940s. In his closing narration, Rod Serling describes it as an airborne Flying Dutchman.
** In the closing narration of "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E108DeathShip Death Ship]]", Rod Serling refers to the spaceship E-89, whose crew is [[GroundhogDayLoop destined to relive the same few hours over and over again]], as a latter day Flying Dutchman.
* ForcedTransformation: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E109JessBelle Jess-Belle]]", the title character obtains a LovePotion from Granny Hart. As she does not have any money to pay for it, she has to pay a price of a different sort: she turns into a leopard [[WhenTheClockStrikesTwelve every night at twelve o'clock]].
* ForegoneConclusion: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E76StillValley Still Valley]]", Rod Serling notes in his closing narration that Sgt. Joseph Paradine and the other Confederate troops were ordered to move up north to an obscure little place in UsefulNotes/{{Pennsylvania}} called Gettysburg.

** "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E101CavenderIsComing Cavender is Coming]]", a PoorlyDisguisedPilot for a prospective comedy series starring Jesse White as the title character, an apprentice GuardianAngel who assists a klutzy mortal named Agnes Grep played by Creator/CarolBurnett.

** For Season 2, six episodes were [[VideoInsideFilmOutside recorded on videotape]] using four video cameras on a studio soundstage at CBS Television City, as a cost-cutting measure mandated by CBS programming head James T. Aubrey. However, videotape was a relatively primitive medium in the early 1960s, thus the editing of tape was next to impossible. Even worse, the requisite multicamera setup of the videotape experiment made location shooting difficult, severely limiting the potential scope of the storylines, so the crew had to abandon the videotaping project. The six "videotape episodes" are "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E44TheLatenessOfTheHour The Lateness of the Hour]]", "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E47TheNightOfTheMeek The Night of the Meek]]", "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E50TheWholeTruth The Whole Truth]]", "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E53TwentyTwo Twenty-Two]]", "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E56Static Static]]" and "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E58LongDistanceCall Long Distance Call]]".
* FortuneTeller: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E43NickOfTime Nick of Time]]", there is a little coin-operated fortune-telling machine in a diner, that answers yes-or-no questions. A superstitious Don Carter starts to think it's giving out accurate answers and gets obsessed, and his wife tries to talk sense into him. This is a definite case of MaybeMagicMaybeMundane, and a lot of questions if it is magic. All of the following are possible: the machine accurately predicted the future as it was meant to, it was designed for/attempted to trap people (which would be a lot of trouble for a few pennies), its only ability was to make you ''think'' it made accurate predictions, or it was in fact an ordinary machine and the seemingly accurate predictions were a series of improbable coincidences.
* FountainOfYouth:
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E86KickTheCan Kick the Can]]", Charles Whitley convinces the other Sunnyvale Rest Home residents, with the exception of his lifelong friend Ben Conroy, that playing kick-the-can in the street is the key to recapturing their lost youth. When he and the superintendent Mr. Cox investigate, Ben finds that Charles and the others have regressed to young children. After this transformation, the young Charles fails to recognize Ben.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E131AShortDrinkFromACertainFountain A Short Drink from a Certain Fountain]]", Harmon Gordon is desperate to keep up with his wife Flora, 40 years his junior, and asks his brother Raymond to test an experimental cellular serum on him in the hope that he will become young again. Although it has been successfully tested on animal subjects and human glands and organs, Raymond says that it will be 20 years before it is ready for human testing. However, he reluctantly agrees to inject Harmon with the serum after his brother threatens to commit suicide. The next morning, Harmon has the appearance of a man of about 40 and regresses to 30 in front of Flora and Raymond. It soon becomes clear that the effects of the serum are out of control. Within hours, Harmon has become a toddler.
* FourthDateMarriage: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E103InHisImage In His Image]]", Alan Talbot and Jessica Connelly got engaged after knowing each other for only four days. [[spoiler:Jessica never learns that Alan was an android or that his identity was assumed by his creator Walter Ryder, Jr.]]

* FriendToAllChildren: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E72TheGrave The Grave]]", Johnny-Rob says that all children and [[FriendToAllLivingThings animals]] love him as they always follow him around.
* TheFundamentalist: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E103InHisImage In His Image]]", Alan Talbot meets an evangelist in a subway station who tells him that Main/{{God}} sees and hears everything and that Main/{{Satan}} plans to have him. He only manages to shut her up by pushing her under a train.
* TheFutureIsShocking: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E59AHundredYardsOverTheRim A Hundred Yards over the Rim]]", after arriving in 1961, Chris Horn is shocked by the sight of a truck, which almost runs him over. He thinks that it is a monster.

* GagCensor: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E78OnceUponATime Once Upon a Time]]", after Officer Flannagan tells him to watch his step, Woodrow Mulligan mutters in irritation. The intertitle reads "Censored!" Immediately afterwards, Mulligan is knocked into a pig trough by a man on a penny farthing and shouts something after him. This time, the intertitle is "Also Censored."
* GangOfBullies: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E28ANicePlaceToVisit A Nice Place to Visit]]", it is mentioned that Rocky Valentine started a street gang called the Angels when he was eight years old.
* {{Gaslighting}}:
** {{Discussed|Trope}} in "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E92PersonOrPersonsUnknown Person or Persons Unknown]]". David Gurney believes that someone is attempting to drive him crazy by buying off everyone who knows him, including his wife Wilma, his best friend Pete and his own mother, so they will pretend not to know him.
** Again [[DiscussedTrope discussed]] in "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E144WhatsInTheBox What's in the Box]]". Joe Britt accuses his wife Phyllis and the TV repairman of plotting to drive him crazy after his recently fixed TV shows him incriminating scenes from his life.
* GenderFlip:
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E16TheHitchHiker The Hitch-Hiker]]", the protagonist is a woman named Nan Adams. In ''The Orson Welles Show'' radio play by Lucille Fletcher on which it was based, the protagonist is a man named Ronald Adams. [[CreatorBacklash Fletcher was not pleased by this change]]. Furthermore, in the radio version, Ronald picks up a woman and briefly gives her a lift but she leaves after he tries to run over the hitch-hiker. In the television version, Nan gives a lift to a male sailor, who leaves for the same reason.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E89ToServeMan To Serve Man]]", a translator named Betty discovers [[ToServeMan the true meaning]] of the Kanamit book ''To Serve Man''. In the short story by Creator/DamonKnight, it is a man named Gregori.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E94FourOClock Four O'Clock]]", Oliver Crangle's parrot is a male named Pete. In the short story by Price Day, the parrot is a female named [[ADogNamedDog Pet]].
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E107Mute Mute]]", the telepathic child is a girl named Ilse Nielsen while the Wheelers have lost their daughter Sally. In the short story by Creator/RichardMatheson, the telepathic child is a boy named Paal Nielsen while the Wheelers have lost their son David.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E116OfLateIThinkOfCliffordville Of Late I Think of Cliffordville]]", Satan appears to William J. Feathersmith in the form of Miss Devlin. In the short story "Blind Alley" by Malcolm Jameson, Satan (most commonly called His Nibs) assumes a male form with the conventional appearance of "the vermilion anthropoid modified by barbed tail, cloven hoofs, horns and a wonderful sardonic leer."
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E86KickTheCan Kick the Can]]", the Sunnyvale Rest Home administrator is Mr. Cox. In the ''Film/TwilightZoneTheMovie'' adaptation, it is Miss Cox.

** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E5WalkingDistance Walking Distance]]", Martin Sloan meets himself as an 11-year-boy but he does not realize that he has traveled back in time until a teenager tells him that his 1934 roadster is brand new.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E52APennyForYourThoughts A Penny for Your Thoughts]]", Hector B. Poole spends half an episode reading people's minds before realizing that no, they're not talking out loud while somehow keeping their mouths closed.

** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E83DeadMansShoes Dead Man's Shoes]]", when Wilma loses control over not knowing what's going on, Dane (in Nathan Bledsoe's body) slaps her to calm her down.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E108DeathShip Death Ship]]", when Lieutenant Ted Mason starts to freak out over their bizarre experiences, Captain Paul Ross punches him in the face and knocks him down.
* GetBackToTheFuture: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E54TheOdysseyOfFlight33 The Odyssey of Flight 33]]", Flight 33 is sent millions of years back in time after breaking the sound barrier. The crew try to return it to 1961 by reversing the process. However, they do not travel far enough forward in time as they arrive over New York City in 1939. Another attempt is made but Flight 33 is running low on fuel so there is no guarantee of success.
* GhostCity: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E75TheMidnightSun The Midnight Sun]]", UsefulNotes/NewYorkCity has been mostly evacuated due to the extreme heat as people are looking for cooler regions elsewhere.
* GhostShip: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E104TheThirtyFathomGrave The Thirty-Fathom Grave]]", the submarine ''714'', which was sunk by the Japanese in 1942, is seemingly haunted by its crew.
* GirlNextDoor: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E138BlackLeatherJackets Black Leather Jackets]]", Ellen Tillman is a nice, sweet girl who lives next door to the house that the aliens have rented. Scott soon falls in love with her.
* GlassyPrison: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E61TheSilence The Silence]]", Jamie Tennyson lives in a glass cell in the basement of his club for a year to prove that he is fulfilling his part of the bargain and remaining silent.
* AGlitchInTheMatrix: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E62ShadowPlay Shadow Play]]", Adam Grant has had [[RecurringDreams the same nightmare about being executed]] many times so he knows that it is a dream but he notes the tell tale signs to the [[DreamPeople characters in the dream]]. Most notably, he was sentenced and is due to be executed on the same day, which would not happen in reality. When the district attorney Henry Ritchie visits his cell, Adam says that he would not be allowed to see a prisoner about to be about executed in real life. He also remarks on the incongruity of his fellow prisoner Jiggs having a watch to tell him what time it is.
* AGodAmI:
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E93TheLittlePeople The Little People]]", after the astronauts William Fletcher and Peter Craig stumble across a civilization of the titular miniscule aliens, Craig goes power-mad and declares himself their god. [[spoiler:He gets killed by some even bigger aliens when he attracts their attention by screaming that there's only room for one god here, and gets accidentally crushed.]]
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E118OnThursdayWeLeaveForHome On Thursday We Leave for Home]]", Captain William Benteen, a man who has become the leader of a group of previously stranded settlers on V9-Gamma, is very protective of his position, and Colonel Sloane, who comes to rescue them, accuses him of thinking himself a god.
* GodIsGood: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E84TheHunt 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.
* GoldDigger: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E131AShortDrinkFromACertainFountain A Short Drink from a Certain Fountain]]", Flora worked in a chorus line when she met the wealthy Harmon Gordon, 40 years her senior, who soon fell in love with her. It is clear that she married him for his money as she has no affection for him and bullies him at every turn.
* GoldFever: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E60TheRipVanWinkleCaper The Rip Van Winkle Caper]]", [=DeCruz=], even after he arrives in the future, can only think about how they can profit off the gold. Later, he kills Brooks and extorts Farwell's share in exchange for water.

* GreaserDelinquents: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E138BlackLeatherJackets Black Leather Jackets]]", the aliens Scott, Steve and Fred disguise themselves as this.

* GreekChorus: Rod Serling starting with "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E36AWorldOfHisOwn A World of His Own]]". [[spoiler:[[TheFourthWallWillNotProtectYou He picked a bad time to start appearing on screen.]] ]]
* GrewBeyondTheirProgramming: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E36AWorldOfHisOwn A World of His Own]]", [[spoiler:the playwright Gregory West, who has the ability to [[RewritingReality rewrite reality]] using his dictaphone, created a perfect, impeccable and flawless wife for himself named Victoria. At the beginning of the episode, she comes back to Gregory's house against his will. This is the first time that she has demonstrated independence, indicating to Gregory that she has grown beyond the parameters that he set when he created her.]]
* TheGrimReaper:
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZone1959S1E2OneForTheAngels One for the Angels]]", Death appears to the pitchman Lou J. Bookman and tells him that his scheduled time of departure is midnight that night. Lou convinces him to wait until he makes his greatest sales pitch and then decides never to make another pitch as long as he lives. In order to [[BalancingDeathsBooks balance his books]], Death arranges for a little girl named Maggie Polonski, a friend of Lou's, to be hit by a truck. In order to save her life, Lou makes that great sales pitch, sacrificing his own life in the process.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E16TheHitchHiker The Hitch-Hiker]]", Nan Adams is frightened by the fact that she sees the same strange hitchhiker at every stop no matter how fast and how far she drives. [[spoiler:She eventually learns that she has been DeadAllAlong, having been killed in a car accident six days earlier, and the hitchhiker is Death.]]
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E81NothingInTheDark Nothing in the Dark]]", Wanda Dunn is so terrified of being taken by Mr. Death that has not left her apartment in years. After a young police officer named Harold Beldon is shot, she very reluctantly brings him inside so that she can care for him. [[spoiler:It turns out that Beldon is Death and that he tricked her into letting him into her apartment to prove to her that she had nothing to fear from him.]]
* GripingAboutGremlins: "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E123NightmareAt20000Feet Nightmare at 20,000 Feet]]" is the TropeCodifier. Bob Wilson sees a gremlin on the wing of the plane attacking one of its engines but can't get anyone else, including his wife Julia, to believe him or see the gremlin.
* GrumpyOldMan: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E56Static Static]]", Ed Lindsay is a bitter bachelor in late middle age who despises television and longs for the days when radio was the most popular form of entertainment in the home. His ex-fiancé Vinnie Brown does not believe that he is really hearing radio transmissions from the 1930s and 1940s. She instead thinks that it is all a product of his imagination as they used to the listen to those programs together and he regrets not marrying her when he had the chance in 1940.
* GuardianAngel:
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E33MrBevis Mr. Bevis]]", J. Hardy Hempstead has been the guardian angel of multiple Bevis family members since one of them, hundreds of years before, performed an unspecified heroic act that earned such an angel as a reward.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E101CavenderIsComing Cavender is Coming]]", Harmon Cavender is assigned as Agnes Grep's guardian angel to see whether he can improve her life in 24 hours and finally earn his wings.
* GuineaPigFamily: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E107Mute Mute]]", Ilse Nielsen's parents Holger and Fanny made her the subject of an experiment from the time that she was born: to induce [[{{Telepathy}} telepathic ability]] in her by never speaking to her. Three other German couples, the Werners, the Elkenbergs and the Kalders, did the same thing with their children. All of their attempts were successful, with Ilse being the most powerful telepath of the group.

* HairTriggerTemper: Simon and Barbara in "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E128UncleSimon Uncle Simon]]", especially to each other.
* HallOfMirrors: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E121InPraiseOfPip In Praise of Pip]]", Max Phillips follows the 10-year-old version of his son Pip into the amusement park's hall of mirrors after he runs away. Pip then explains that he is dying and disappears.
* HammerAndSickleRemovedForYourProtection: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E66Two Two]]", the man speaks English (with an American accent, of course) and the woman speaks Russian.

** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E81NothingInTheDark Nothing in the Dark]]", Wanda Dunn saw Death kill a woman just by touching her many years earlier. 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.
* HappilyMarried:
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E84TheHunt The Hunt]]", Hyder and Rachel Simpson have had a very happy life together since their marriage almost 50 years earlier.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E96TheTradeIns The Trade-Ins]]", John and Marie Holt have been married for 50 years and remain very much in love and completely dedicated to each other. They wish to have 100 more years together by transferring their minds into new, younger bodies. However, they only have enough money for one of them to do so. As John is in near constant pain, Marie convinces him to go ahead with the transformation. When he does so, however, John can't bear the thought of Marie still being old when he is young and strong. He has the process reversed so that he and Marie can spend the rest of their lives together. John tells her that she is worth the pain.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E119PassageOnTheLadyAnne Passage on the Lady Anne]]", all of the couples who have traveled aboard the ''Lady Anne'' have had extremely happy marriages. Millie [=McKenzie=] credits the ship with enhancing her love for Toby, her husband of 53 years, and believes that every other couple onboard owes the ''Lady Anne'' a similar debt.
* HappinessIsMandatory:
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E73ItsAGoodLife It's a Good Life]]", everyone in Peaksville represses negative thoughts and emotions for fear that if Anthony Fremont senses unhappiness, he will either lash out in anger at the thinker for being dissatisfied with the world he has made or make a misguided attempt to help.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E137Number12LooksJustLikeYou Number 12 Looks Just Like You]]", the Transformation alters people's minds so that the only emotion that they are capable of experiencing is happiness.
* HarassingPhoneCall: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E94FourOClock Four O'Clock]]", Oliver Crangle tells FBI Agent Hall that he calls the supposedly evil people in the middle of the night to accuse them of various crimes.
* HauntedHouse: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E99YoungMansFancy Young Man's Fancy]]", Henrietta Walker's house is a non-malicious example. Things in the house shift and turn between modern day and older appliances. A grandfather clock that doesn't work suddenly works again, a non-functioning radio suddenly turns on and plays older music, and eventually, Henrietta Walker's ghost appears.

* HeadsTailsEdge: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E52APennyForYourThoughts A Penny for Your Thoughts]]", when Hector B. Poole pays for a newspaper, the coin lands on its edge and he gains the power to [[{{Telepathy}} read minds]]. In the final scene, Hector accidentally knocks over the first coin with a second one and thereby loses his new ability.

* HellBentForLeather: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E138BlackLeatherJackets Black Leather Jackets]]", Scott, Steve and Fred wear the titular attire as part of their disguise as GreaserDelinquents.
* HellOfAHeaven: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E84TheHunt The Hunt]]", as far as Hyder Simpson is concerned, a Heaven where his dog Rip isn't permitted in and there's no coon hunting allowed is no Heaven at all. [[spoiler:{{Subverted|Trope}} in the end as that actually ''was'' Hell.]]
* HenpeckedHusband:
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E8TimeEnoughAtLast Time Enough at Last]]", Henry Bemis' wife Helen, who clearly despises him, refuses to allow him to read, snatching the newspaper from him as soon as he picks it up. He tells his boss Mr. Carsville that he has been reduced to reading the contents of condiment bottles at home. She later destroys Henry's poetry book and takes delight at her husband's distress at her having done so.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E99YoungMansFancy Young Man's Fancy]]", Alex Walker is continually pressured and prodded by his new wife Virginia to sell his mother Henrietta's house, of which he has many very fond memories. [[SubvertedTrope However]], he finally stands up to her in the final scene [[spoiler:when the power of his nostalgia turns him into a young boy again and he stays in the house with the ghost of his mother]].

** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E62ShadowPlay Shadow Play]]", convicted murderer Adam Grant tries to persuade everyone around him that his impending execution by electric chair is just his own nightmare. At the end of the episode, [[spoiler:he is executed, and wakes up from the "nightmare" to be sentenced to death again, but with the "roles" in his dream rotated among those who played them]].
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E83DeadMansShoes Dead Man's Shoes]]", the homeless man Nate Bledsoe who put on the dead mobster Dane's shoes [[spoiler:and was taken over by his spirit to avenge his death is shot and killed - and another homeless man named Chips finds his body and puts on the shoes]].
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E92PersonOrPersonsUnknown Person or Persons Unknown]]", David Gurney wakes up to find that all evidence that he ever existed, including other people's memories of him, seems to have vanished. The episode ends with [[spoiler:Gurney waking up from a nightmare - to discover that his wife, though she acts and talks as she has always done, looks nothing like he remembers]].
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E108DeathShip Death Ship]]", a trio of astronauts, Captain Paul Ross, Lt. Ted Mason and Lt. Mike Carter, land on a barren planet to discover a wrecked copy of their ship and their own dead bodies in the cockpit. Eventually, they decide that it must be a hallucination to discourage them from landing and collecting samples, but at the end of the episode, [[spoiler:they find themselves reliving their original decision to land on the planet to explore it]].
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E128UncleSimon Uncle Simon]]", Barbara Polk looks after her rich but cruel inventor uncle, Simon, purely because she is his only heir and aims to inherit his fortune when he dies. When he does die, she is freed from his cruelty, but his will requires her to look after his final invention, a robot [[spoiler:which eventually takes on his voice and personality, and she ends the episode as she began it, listlessly bringing hot chocolate to her ungrateful, now robotic, uncle]].
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E140FromAgnesWithLove From Agnes - With Love]]", computer programmer James Elwood tries to fix a bug in Agnes, an office computer, which his predecessor could not solve. However, Agnes falls in love with him and begins breaking her programming - just as she did with his predecessor Fred Danziger. At the end of the episode, [[spoiler:Elwood is told to go on leave by his supervisor, and it is implied that Agnes will fall in love with his replacement Walter Holmes as well]].
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E141SpurOfTheMoment Spur of the Moment]]", Anne Henderson sees a woman in black screaming her name from a hilltop and flees in terror. She later determines that the woman was [[spoiler:her older self, trying to warn her against marrying the wrong man. Eventually, she sees her younger self and tries to give her the same warning, but her younger self flees in terror]].
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E143QueenOfTheNile Queen of the Nile]]", columnist Jordan Herrick interviews actress Pamela Morris, who has somehow remained youthful despite her long screen career. He learns [[spoiler:the hard way that she feeds off the life of young people around her using an Egyptian scarab - she is, in fact, Queen Cleopatra VII of Egypt, now over two thousand years old. As the episode ends, another columnist arrives for an interview]].

** Creator/RodSerling states the oh-so-familiar BigBad of "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E106HesAlive He's Alive]]" will continue to "offer advice" again and again indefinitely in his closing speech.
* HeterosexualLifePartners: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E86KickTheCan Kick the Can]]", Charles Whitley and Ben Conroy, both residents of the Sunnyvale Rest Home, have been friends for almost their entire lives.
* HiddenHeartOfGold: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E87APianoIntheHouse A Piano in the House]]", Fitzgerald Fortune is an arrogant bully because he secretly has the emotional maturity of a child. [[JerkassWoobie He is afraid of people, and as a result acts like an insufferable dick to everyone around him]]. He's even shown to be a LovingBully (of the emotional variety) towards his wife because of it. In the end, the piano makes him reveal this to everybody in the room.
* HijackedByGanon: "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E106HesAlive He's Alive]]" has [[spoiler:UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler hijacking a neo-Nazi campaign]].
* HilarityEnsues: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E50TheWholeTruth The Whole Truth]]", the fact that Harvey Hunnicut CannotTellALie after buying the haunted Model A Ford causes him some problems such as losing sales, getting into a fight with his wife and being punched by his employee Irv when he reveals that he never gives any of his employees raises in spite of all of his promises. However, he manages to avoid any serious consequences until he sells the car to UsefulNotes/NikitaKhrushchev.

** Henry Rathbone, Clara Harris and [[spoiler:John Wilkes Booth]] all appear in "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E49BackThere Back There]]".
** UsefulNotes/AbrahamLincoln appears briefly in "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E69ThePassersby The Passersby]]".
** UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler is used as a character in [[spoiler:"[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E38TheManInTheBottle The Man in the Bottle]]" and "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E106HesAlive He's Alive]]"]].
** UsefulNotes/JesseJames is a major character in "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E85ShowdownWithRanceMcGrew Showdown with Rance McGrew]]".
** Creator/WilliamShakespeare is a major character in "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E120TheBard The Bard]]". Julius later summons the ghosts of Robert E. Lee, UsefulNotes/UlyssesSGrant, UsefulNotes/GeorgeWashington, UsefulNotes/AbrahamLincoln, UsefulNotes/{{Pocahontas}}, UsefulNotes/TheodoreRoosevelt and Creator/BenjaminFranklin.
* HistoricalRapSheet: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E41TheHowlingMan The Howling Man]]", Brother Jerome tells David Ellington that the Devil is responsible for the great wars, the overwhelming pestilences and the wholesale sinning that is regularly inflicted on the world. After Ellington releases him, he causes UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, UsefulNotes/TheKoreanWar and the development of atomic weapons.
* HistoricalUglinessUpdate: Episodes featuring UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler often depict the dictator as physically unattractive as possible.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E106HesAlive He's Alive]]", he's played by Curt Conway, who has a squat face and visible wrinkles unlike the actual dictator, which is jarring when he stands in front of a poster featuring the real-life Hitler.
** When Arthur Castle (played by Luther Adler) is transformed into Hitler in "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E38TheManInTheBottle The Man in the Bottle]]", the only thing that changed for Castle is that he now sports a toothbrush mustache and a hair comb (along with Hitler's uniform), making Hitler look like an obese man akin to Goering.
* HitlersTimeTravelExemptionAct: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E112NoTimeLikeThePast No Time Like the Past]]", Paul Driscoll is determined to use a time machine to avert historical catastrophes, but when he goes back to August 1939 to assassinate Hitler, he is interrupted by a hotel housekeeper and two SS guards. His attempt to prevent the sinking of the ''Lusitania'' is similarly thwarted when no-one on the ship believes his story.
* HoistByHisOwnPetard:
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E149TheJeopardyRoom The Jeopardy Room]]", Commissar Vassiloff, the assassin sent to kill the Russian defector Major Ivan Kuchenko, is killed by the bomb he set up to kill his target.
** In "The Brain Centre at Whipple's", a leader in a factory replaces all his men with machinery...and is himself replaced by a robot.
* HonestJohnsDealership: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E50TheWholeTruth The Whole Truth]]", the used car salesman Harvey Hunnicut is a wheeler and dealer who is willing to tell any and every lie necessary to sell one of the dilapidated cars in his lot. However, an elderly man sells him a haunted Model A Ford for $25 which renders him [[CannotTellALie incapable of telling a lie]].
* HopeSpot: "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E75TheMidnightSun 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.]]
* HotAsHell: "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E116OfLateIThinkOfCliffordville Of Late I Think of Cliffordville]]" starring Julie Newmar as {{Satan}}.
* HowWeGotHere:
** "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E89ToServeMan To Serve Man]]" opens with Michael Chambers in a sparse cell on a cot being commanded to eat by a voice through a loudspeaker. The rest of the episode is his reminiscence of meeting a race of ostensibly benevolent aliens [[spoiler:for whom humans are a dietary staple]].
** "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E156TheBewitchinPool The Bewitchin' Pool]]" opens with Gil and Gloria Sharewood telling their children Sport and Jeb that they plan to divorce, which is a scene from towards the end of the episode. This was because the production was short of usable footage.

* 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 ballet dancer 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.]]
* HumanOutsideAlienInside: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E90TheFugitive The Fugitive]]", Ben belongs to a race of shapeshifters but their [[ShapeShifterDefaultForm default form]] is entirely human.
* HumanPopsicle:
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E60TheRipVanWinkleCaper The Rip Van Winkle Caper]]", after stealing $1 million worth of gold bars, Farwell, [=DeCruz=], Brooks and Erbie place themselves in suspended animation for 100 years so they can evade the authorities and spend the gold when they awaken in 2061. Erbie died when a rock broke his suspended animation pod. [[spoiler:As it turns out, it was AllForNothing as a way to manufacture gold was discovered during their long sleep.]]
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E135TheLongMorrow The Long Morrow]]", the astronaut Commander Douglas Stansfield is placed in suspended animation when he is sent on a mission to a solar system 141 lightyears from Earth on December 31, 1987. He removes himself from suspended animation in June 1988 so that he will be the same age as his love Sandra Horn when he returns to Earth in 2027. [[spoiler:When he does eventually come home, he discovers that Sandra had herself placed in suspended animation shortly after he left. As such, he is now 71 and she is still 26.]]
* HumanityCameFromSpace: [[spoiler:The final scene of "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E129Probe7OverAndOut Probe 7, Over and Out]]" suggests that humanity is descended from [[AdamAndEvePlot Colonel Adam Cook and Norda Eve]], a pair of technologically advanced aliens whose respective homeworlds were destroyed.]]
* HumanPet: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E150StopoverInAQuietTown Stopover in a Quiet Town]]", [[spoiler:Bob and Millie Frazier discover that they have become the pets of a young girl belonging to a race of giants]].
* HumansAreBastards:

** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E51TheInvaders The Invaders]]", it turns out that the "aliens" stalking the woman throughout the episode are actually U.S. astronauts on a planet with gigantic {{Humanoid Alien}}s.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E97TheGift The Gift]]", the benevolent alien Williams is killed by the paranoid and suspicious people of Madeiro, UsefulNotes/{{Mexico}}, who believe him to be either Main/{{Satan}} or a practitioner of BlackMagic.
** In "The Shelter", Dr. Bill Stockton'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.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E146IAmTheNightColorMeBlack I am the Night - Color Me Black]]", darkness appears all over the world in places where hate abounds.

** "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E93TheLittlePeople The Little People]]" tells the story of two astronauts, William Fletcher and Peter Craig, repairing their spacecraft on a planet populated by a tiny alien race. Craig proclaims himself the god of the tiny aliens and makes them build a life-size statue of him. The power he holds over them due to his size immediately goes to his head, and he begins bullying them into obeying him. In an example of LaserGuidedKarma, [[spoiler:another group of spacefarers land on the planet, and they are as large to Craig as he is to the natives; one of them picks him up to look at him and accidentally crushes him to death]].
** PlayedWith in "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E155TheFear The Fear]]". [[spoiler:The tiny aliens are terrified of the "giant" humans but they still seek to conquer Earth.]]

* HumansThroughAlienEyes: The twist ending of "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E51TheInvaders The Invaders]]" reveals that [[spoiler:the strange creatures in the flying saucer who have terrified the old woman in a remote cabin are American astronauts, and the old woman is an alien on a distant planet]].
* HypnoticEyes: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E138BlackLeatherJackets Black Leather Jackets]]", Steve uses his eyes to hypnotize Stuart Tillman into thinking that he, Scott and Fred are nice young men, though the effect is short-lived.
* {{Hypochondria}}: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E145TheMasks The Masks]]", Emily Harper is a severe hypochondriac. After she arrives at her dying father Jason Foster's home, the first thing that she does is complain to his doctor Sam Thorne about a pain in her arm. Over the last 25 years, Emily has claimed to be suffering from a different ailment practically every month. Jason comments that she has been at death's door so often, she must have worn a hole in the welcome mat.

* DoesNotLikeShoes: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E75TheMidnightSun The Midnight Sun]]", Norma is barefoot for the entire episode. {{Justified}} because the story's premise is the Earth heating up as it moves closer to the sun.

* AmbiguousDisorder: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E117TheIncredibleWorldOfHoraceFord The Incredible World of Horace Ford]]", the title character acts like a small child and often has NoIndoorVoice, but he's a brilliant designer. Also, he keeps bouncing around and never seems to focus on one subject.

* CaptionContest: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E17TheFever The Fever]]", Flora Gibbs enters a caption contest and wins an all expenses paid trip to UsefulNotes/LasVegas.

* ArtisticLicenseSpace: The series had a bad habit of having its space-centered episodes happen on - or, in at least one case, have its trained astronauts assume they are on - asteroids. Asteroids that somehow retain breathable atmospheres, and that have gravitic pulls comparable to Earth's.

* TheDollEpisode:
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E98TheDummy The Dummy]]", Jerry Etherson is haunted by his dummy Willie, whom he is convinced is alive and is trying to take over the act.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E126LivingDoll Living Doll]]", Erich Streator is tormented by his stepdaughter Christie's doll Talky Tina, who continually tells him that she is going to kill him.
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E148CaesarAndMe Caesar and Me]]", Jonathan West's ventriloquist's dummy Caesar manipulates him into performing several robberies instead of finding honest work while they are waiting for their big break. He later abandons him, leading everyone to believe that Jonathan is insane, and teams up with an [[EnfanteTerrible evil little girl]] named Susan.

* BalefulPolymorph: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS4E109JessBelle Jess-Belle]]", the title character obtains a LovePotion from Granny Hart. As she does not have any money to pay for it, she has to pay a price of a different sort: she turns into a leopard [[WhenTheClockStrikesTwelve every night at twelve o'clock]].

* CryCute: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E66Two Two]]", after taking a shot at the man, the woman spends the night in the barber's shop and cries slightly because of her loneliness.

* AdultFear: The show was full of this in addition to more supernatural threats. The episode "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E121InPraiseOfPip In Praise of Pip]]" shows a bookie receiving news that his son Pip, who has gone to Indochina in the opening months of what is about to become UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar, has been seriously wounded in combat and is possibly dying. The rest of the episode revolves around the man possibly hallucinating that Pip is a ten year old boy again while he is dying of a gunshot wound. In what is a massively sad scene, he begs his son not to die and apologizes for not being a better father and role model to him while promising to do better, even though he realizes it may be too late for both of them. [[spoiler:In the end, the father [[HeroicSacrifice trades his own life for Pip's]].]]

* AndIMustScream: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E124AKindOfAStopwatch A Kind of a Stopwatch]]", Patrick [=McNulty=] uses the stopwatch that can freeze time to rob a bank, [[spoiler:only to drop the watch and break it, leaving him frozen in time forever]].

** The ComicBookAdaptation of "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E54TheOdysseyOfFlight33 The Odyssey of Flight 33]]" changes the order of the plane's first two trips back through time. In the comic version, it arrives in New York City during the 1939 World's Fair before traveling millions of years into the past. They also discover that what will one day be New York is entirely underwater, as it was during the Cretaceous Period in reality. This differs from the episode in which Manhattan Island and other landmarks are the same shape as in 1961. The plane's third attempt to return to its own time is also depicted in the comic. It leads them to an unspecified time in the future when Earth is ravaged by ClimateChange and planes are automatically landed by digital pilot.

* AndIMustScream:
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E61TheSilence The Silence]]", [[spoiler:Jamie Tennyson wins the bet that he made with Colonel Archie Taylor to remain silent for a year in exchange for $500,000. However, Taylor does not have the money. Tennyson then reveals that he had the nerves to his vocal cords severed, leaving him not only unable to speak or scream but near bankrupt.]]
** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E124AKindOfAStopwatch A Kind of a Stopwatch]]", Patrick [=McNulty=] uses the stopwatch that can freeze time to rob a bank, [[spoiler:only to drop the watch and break it, leaving him frozen in time forever]].

* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: The first season had neither the iconic theme nor Rod Serling appearing in the beginning to introduce the episode; instead it had a shorter theme, and Serling introducing the episode by voiceover. Several episodes also featured a narration about midway through. Serling makes his first cameo in the first-season finale, and in that episode it's actually part of the plot: the story involves a writer whose every imaginary character comes to life in the real world, and Serling is one of them. The familiar theme and Serling's onscreen story introductions both started in Season 2.

* EldritchLocation: In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E91LittleGirlLost Little Girl Lost]]", the other dimension to which Tina Miller is sent is a bizarre, abstract realm which distorts perceptions. For instance, Tina's father Chris believed that he was standing upright in spite of the fact that his legs were still on the other side of the portal.

** In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS5E146IAmTheNightColorMeBlack I am the Night - Color Me Black]]", Jagger is [[PublicExecution publicly executed]] on May 25, 1964. The last person to be publicly executed in the United States was Rainey Bethea in Owensboro, Kentucky on August 14, 1936.

** The ComicBookAdaptation of "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS2E54TheOdysseyOfFlight33 The Odyssey of Flight 33]]" changes the order of the plane's first two trips back through time. In the comic version, it arrives in New York City during the 1939 World's Fair before traveling millions of years into the past. They also discover that what will one day be New York is entirely underwater, as it was during the Cretaceous Period in reality. This differs from the episode in which Manhattan Island and other landmarks are the same shape as in 1961. The plane's third attempt to return to its own time is also depicted in the comic. It leads them to an unspecified time in the future when Earth is ravaged by GlobalWarming and planes are automatically landed by digital pilot.

* DeadUnicornTrope: The phrase "submitted for your approval" has become synonymous with the series and Creator/RodSerling, despite him only saying this exact phrase three times in the entire show. [[note]]There were some close variants, such as "submitted for your perusal" and "pleased to present for your consideration".[[/note]]

* DeadUnicornTrope: The phrase "submitted for your approval" is iconic with the series and Rod Serling. However, Serling only spoke this exact phrase in three episodes. [[note]]There were some similar lines, such as "submitted for your perusal" or "pleased to present for your consideration".[[/note]]