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[[File:twilight-zone.jpg|frame|Your next stop... the Twilight Zone.]]
{{quote|''"There is a fifth dimension, beyond that which is known to Man. It is a dimension as vast as space, and as timeless as infinity. It is the middleground between light and shadow, between science and superstition; and it lies between the pit of Man's fears, and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call... [[Title Drop|the Twilight Zone]]."''|'''[[Rod Serling]]''', the first [[Opening Narration]]}}
One of television's most revered series, ''The Twilight Zone'' ([[CBS (company)|CBS]], 1959–64) stands as the role model for TV anthologies. Its trenchant sci-fi/fantasy parables explore humanity's hopes, despairs, prides, and prejudices in metaphoric ways conventional drama cannot.
Creator [[Rod Serling]] wrote the majority of the scripts, and produced those of such now-legendary writers as [[Richard Matheson]] and Charles Beaumont. The series featured such soon-to-be-famous actors as Robert Redford, [[William Shatner]], Burt Reynolds, Robert Duvall, Dennis Hopper, Carol Burnett, James Coburn, Charles Bronson, Lee Marvin, Peter Falk, [[Donald Pleasence]] and Bill Mumy, as well as such established stars as silent-film giant [[Buster Keaton]], Art Carney, Mickey Rooney, Ida Lupino, and John Carradine.
''[[Twilight Zone: The Movie]]'', a big-screen adaptation that featured individual segments produced by [[Steven Spielberg]], [[Joe Dante]], [[John Landis]] and George Miller was released in 1983. Tragically, the movie is [[Never Live It Down|better remembered]] for a [[Gone Horribly Wrong|horrible accident]] in which three actors (two of them children) were killed during shooting of an action scene in Landis' segment.
An often worthy [[The Twilight Zone (1985 series)|revival series]] ran on CBS from 1985–87, and [[The Twilight Zone (1988 series)|another]] in first-run syndication in 1988. [[The Twilight Zone (2002 series)|Another]] ran on UPN in 2002, which reunited Bill Mumy and Cloris Leachman in a sequel to the classic ''TZ'' chiller "It's a ''Good'' Life". But it's the daring original series that shows every sign of lasting the ages as the literature that it is.
Description from: [https://web.archive.org/web/20131011223219/http://www.syfy.com/twilightzone/ SyFy]
'''''The Twilight Zone''''' had a rather remarkable ability to take silly story concepts, combine them with [[Anvilicious|preachy, moralistic writing]], and produce some truly outstanding episodes (seriously, you think ''[[The West Wing]]'' was heavy-handed? Take a gander at one of the original ''TZ'' episodes). The ghost of [[Adolf Hitler]] travels to the United States and teaches Dennis Hopper to become an effective demagogue ("He's Alive")? It works. A former concentration camp commander travels back to Dachau after [[World War Two]] and is put on trial by the ghosts of his victims ("Death's Head Revisited")? It works. [[William Shatner]] hams it up and yells about the monster on the wing of the plane ("Nightmare at 20,000 Feet")? It works.
Almost all episodes ended with [[An Aesop|Aesops]]; "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder", "Be tolerant", "Democracy is good", "Nazis are bad", etc (those last two work better on screen than they do in print, really). Occasionally, however, you'd get a [[Family-Unfriendly Aesop]]. Perhaps the most notorious example was the episode "Time Enough at Last", which starred Burgess Meredith and seemed to tell the viewer, "Even if you are a good and decent man, you can still have horrible things continually happen to you and end up with no hope at all", and became one of the most famous episodes of the original series. Other notorious examples are episodes that use recycled scripting employing a family unfriendly Aesop version of the original episode's end in order to force a (rather disturbing, especially in the context of the original episode) twist. Other times, aesops conflict with one another. "The Gift" tells you not to be bigots toward aliens, because they might just be bringing you the cure for cancer. But "To Serve Man" has all of humanity accepting and tolerant of aliens, which [[To Serve Man|turns out to be a bad thing.]]
Many television shows have [[Affectionate Parody|borrowed liberally]] from the ''Twilight Zone'', especially ''[[The Simpsons (animation)|The Simpsons]] Treehouse of Horror'' and ''[[Futurama]]'''s "[[Show Within a Show|The Scary]] [[Affectionate Parody|Door]]" and "Anthology of Interest".
See also the episode [[The Twilight Zone/Recap|Recap page]].
Do not confuse with [[wikipedia:Mesopelagic zone|the part of the ocean from 200 to 1000 meters below the surface]]. Or with the band on the Earth's surface that's on the far side of the sun but close enough to the lit side to receive some light.
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{{tropenamer}}
* [[To Serve Man]]
----
* [[Acquired Poison Immunity]]: "The Jeopardy Room".
* [[Adam and Eve Plot]]: {{spoiler|"Two", and more literally "Probe 7, Over and Out”}}.
* [[Adolf Hitler]]: In "He's Alive", the ghost of Adolf gives advice to a young neo-Nazi (played by [[Dennis Hopper]]).
* [[After the End]]: "Time Enough at Last", "The Old Man in the Cave", "Two".
* [[The Ageless]]: Walter Jameson, from ''The Twilight Zone'' episode "Long Live Walter Jameson", was granted this form of immortality in Ancient Greece by an alchemist. He says that he came close to death many times over the centuries due to injuries and disease, "but never close enough". {{spoiler|At the end of the episode when he is shot, he begins to age rapidly as he dies until he is nothing but a pile of dust}}.
* [[Aliens Speaking English]]: Pretty consistently played straight. Averted in {{spoiler|"The Invaders"}}.
* [[A.I. Is a Crapshoot]]: "From Agnes - With Love". The AI begins falling in love with whoever is been trying to deal with Agnes' "problem".
* [[All Just a Dream]]: {{spoiler|"Where Is Everybody?", "Perchance to Dream", "The Arrival," "The Midnight Sun", "Person or Persons Unknown" (with an added twist), "The Time Element" (also with an added twist), "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge"}}. Also, see [[Dead All Along]] below.
* [[The Aloner]]: "Where Is Everybody?", "King Nine Will Not Return".
* [[Always a Bigger Fish]]: "{{spoiler|The Little People
* [[Ambiguous Disorder]]: Horace Ford in the episode "The Incredible World of Horace Ford" acts like a small child and often has [[No Indoor Voice]], but he's a brilliant designer. Also, he keeps bouncing around and never seems to focus on one subject.
* [[American Civil War]]: The setting of "The Passersby", "Still Valley", and "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge". Also mentioned in "Long Live Walter Jameson" (see [[Exposition of Immortality]] below)
* [[An Aesop]]: With some exceptions.
* [[Ancient Keeper]]: "Elegy".
* [[And I Must Scream]]: Probably more episodes than this troper has seen but "A Kind of a Stopwatch" has a notable one.
* [[Asshole Victim]]: When a protagonist is driven to murder, it usually involves being pushed over the edge by one of these. Not that this protects them from [[Laser
* [[Author Avatar]]: According to biographies, "A Stop
** "Walking Distance" was another of Serling's favorite episodes. The old-fashioned town in the story is based on the town he grew up in and the main character (as an adult and a little boy) was based on him.
* [[Back
* [[Balancing Death's Books]]: "One for the Angels", "In Praise of Pip".
* [[Bandaged Face]]: [[The Reveal]] of a few episodes involved one of these, perhaps most famously in {{spoiler|"Eye of the Beholder"}}.
* [[Baseball Episode]]: "The Mighty Casey".
* [[Be Careful What You Wish For]]: Many. A few examples include "The Chaser
** The advice is followed in "I Dream
** "Time Enough at Last" [[Playing
* [[Becoming the Costume]]: {{spoiler|"The Masks" and "The Night of the Meek"}}.
* [[Becoming the Genie]]: "I Dream of Genie". {{spoiler|Averted in that the guy ''wants'' to be a genie who can help anyone}}.
* [[Betty and Veronica]]: In "A World of His Own
* [[Beware of Hitch
* [[Be Yourself]]: The protagonist of "Mr. Bevis" learns this [[An Aesop|Aesop]] after his [[Guardian Angel]] makes him a [[Slave to PR]].
* [[A Birthday, Not a Break]]: In "The Shelter", a suburban doctor's birthday party turns into a mad scramble for survival when a nuclear alert is announced—and the doctor's fallout shelter has only enough room for himself and his family.
* [[Blatant Lies]]: "There is nothing ulterior in our motives. ''Nothing at all''."
* [[Born in
* [[Bottle Episode]]: Several, including "The Whole Truth
* [[The Boxing Episode]]: "The Big Tall Wish" and "Steel".
* [[Break His Heart to Save Him]]: "The Trouble with Templeton".
* [[Breaking the Fourth Wall]]: Rod Serling not only provides narration, frequently on-camera, but he actually becomes part of the story in "A World of His Own". Temporarily, at least.
* [[Break the Haughty]]: Used in many, many episodes. "Four O'Clock" and "Piano in the House" come to mind.
* [[The Butler Did It]]: In "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?", a group of people get off a bus and gather at a cafe where they are served food and drinks by the local counter jerk and dine. It is later revealed by the police that one of the people on the bus seems to have been an alien. [[Ten Little Murder Victims]] ensues, the resolution of which is only a half-subversion of [[The Butler Did It]]: {{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
* [[Butter Face]]: {{spoiler|What the process does, and everyone else, in "Eye of the Beholder" (aka "The Private World of Darkness")
* [[Butt Monkey]]: Henry Bemis of "Time Enough
** Burgess Meredith was kind of the master at this; see also "Mr. Dingle the Strong
** Also, the titular "Mr. Bevis
* [[The Caligula]]: The main character of "The Mirror".
* [[Canon Sue]]: In-universe; the main character in "Showdown with Ranch McGrew" plays one... and Jesse James isn't pleased with it at all.
* [[Captivity Harmonica]]: In the episode "Shadow Play", and used {{spoiler|to escape}} in "Hocus-Pocus and Frisby".
* [[Cassandra Truth]]: "Back There
* [[Catch Phrase]]: ''Submitted for your consideration/approval''.
* [[Characteristic Trope]]
* [[Chekhov's Armoury]]: {{spoiler|"The New Exhibit
* [[Chess
* [[Christmas Episode]]: "Night of the Meek".
* [[Cigarette of Anxiety]]: The lead character of the episode "Nervous Man in a Four Dollar Hotel Room" 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.
* [[Comic Book Adaptation]]: Dell Comics published two issues in 1962, after which Gold Key picked up the ball and continued publishing a ''
* [[Conveniently Coherent Thoughts]]: In the episode "A Penny
* [[Conveniently Interrupted Document]]: In "The Gift", an alien brings a message to the people of Earth. The alien gets killed and the message burned. Then someone reads the message, which is something like, "As a symbol of our friendship we offer the following, a cure for all forms of cancer." The rest is burned away.
* [[Corrupt Corporate Executive]]: William J. Feathersmith in "Of Late I Think of Cliffordville".
* [[The Corrupter]]s: The aliens in "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street", of the exacerbate-preexisting-character-flaws variety. They qualify as [[Magnificent Bastard]]s because {{spoiler|their corrupting of the people is all done by suggestion and playing on fears; they never show themselves}}.
* [[Crazy Memory]]: "Hocus-Pocus and Frisby" is about a man who tells outrageous lies to his friends about his past... and is promptly kidnapped by aliens, who think his lies are true.
* [[Creepy Child]]: Anthony in "It's a Good Life", Markie in "Nightmare as a Child".
* [[Creepy Doll]]/[[The Doll Episode]]: "Living Doll
* [[Cruel Twist Ending]]: "Time Enough at Last".
** Lesser known examples include "Young Man's Fancy", "Caesar and Me", and "What's in the Box?".
* [[The Cuckoolander Was Right]]: {{spoiler|In "Will
* [[Danger Takes a Backseat]]: "The Hitch-Hiker".
{{quote|
* [[Dead All Along]]:
* [[Dead to Begin With]]: "A Nice Place to Visit
* [[Deal
** "Escape Clause
** Surprisingly subverted {{spoiler|in "Still Valley"}}.
* [[Death Trap]]: "The Jeopardy Room
* [[Deliberate Values Dissonance]]: "No Time Like the Past".
* [[Devil in Disguise]]: The Devil usually appears in the guise of a regular person. In "The Howling Man", he appears to be some poor guy who's been imprisoned by a madman, but when someone takes pity and releases him his horns and tail reappear.
* [[Disproportionate Retribution]]: "Time Enough at Last".
* [[Divide and Conquer]]/[[A House Divided]]: {{spoiler|"The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street"}}.
* [[Divine Intervention]]: Possibly in "I Am the Night - [[Color Me Black]]". The Sun fails to rise on the day of a man's execution, and, {{spoiler|once Jagger's been hanged, the darkness starts spreading everywhere}}.
* [[Diving Save]]: The robot grandmother near the end of "[[Ray Bradbury|I Sing the Body Electric]]".
* [[Does Not Like Shoes]]: Norma in "The Midnight Sun" is barefoot for the entire episode.
* [[Don't Fear the Reaper]]: "Nothing in the Dark
* [[Doppelganger]]: "Mirror Image
* [[Dream Apocalypse]]: {{spoiler|"Shadow Play
* [[Dripping Disturbance]]: This is one of the ordinary noises played with in "Sounds and Silences".
* [[Dropped Glasses]]: {{spoiler|"Time Enough at Last
* [[Earth All Along]]: {{spoiler|"I Shot an Arrow into the Air
* [[Empty Piles of Clothing]]: The fate of two characters in "Long Live Walter Jameson" and "Queen of the Nile".
* [[
* [[Episode on a Plane]]: Most famously in "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet." Also in "The Odyssey of Flight 33".
* [[Equivalent Exchange]]
* [[Every Episode Ending]]: Nearly every episode ends with a short commentary from Rod Serling, usually to deliver [[An Aesop]], almost always ending with "...in the [[Title Drop|Twilight Zone]]."
* [[Evil-Detecting Dog]]: In the episode "The Hunt". "A man will walk into hell with both eyes open, but even the Devil can't fool a dog."
* [[Evil Cannot Comprehend Good]]: Mr. Radin in "One More Pallbearer" sets up a fake bomb scare scenario and expects three people who once humiliated him in the past to make them apologize to him, and he seems mystified that they would rather spend their last moments with their loved ones than try to save themselves.
* [[Exposition of Immortality]]: In the episode "Long Live Walter Jameson", the titular character is a history professor who knows his stuff, has a retiring colleague who comments on his appearance and who is seen in a [[American Civil War]] period picture, revealing just how he knows that period so very well.
* [[False Innocence Trick]]: "The Howling Man" is basically one of these from start to end.
* [[Fantastic Anthropologist]]: "Mr. Dingle the Strong
* [[Fish Out of Temporal Water]]: The lead characters of the [[Time Travel]] episodes, especially "Execution
* [[Fortune Teller]]: A little coin-operated fortune-telling machine in a diner, that answers yes-or-no questions, in "Nick of Time". A superstitious [[William Shatner]] starts to think it's giving out accurate answers and gets obsessed, and his wife tries to talk sense into him.
* [[Future Me Scares Me]]: {{spoiler|"Spur of the Moment" and "Walking Distance". Inverted in "Nightmare as a Child".}}
* [[Genre Anthology]]
* [[Genre Blind]]: Some of the protagonists are a bit slow to realize they're in a paranormal situation. For instance, Hector spends half an episode reading people's minds in "A Penny for Your Thoughts" before realizing that no, they're not talking out loud while somehow keeping their mouths closed.
* [[Get a Hold of Yourself, Man!]]: Captain Ross to Lieutenant Mason in "Death Ship".
* [[Get Back to
* [[Getting Crap Past the Radar]]: Not "crap" per
* [[A God Am I]]: "The Little People", "On Thursday We Leave
* [[Government Drug Enforcement]]: Several episodes.
* [[The Grim Reaper]]: "One for the Angels," "Nothing in the Dark", "{{spoiler|The Hitch-Hiker}}".
* [[Guardian Angel]]: J. Hardy Hempstead in "Mr. Bevis
* [[Guinea Pig Family]]: "Mute".
* [[Hair
* [[Haunted Technology]]: "The Fever
* [[Heads
* [[
* [[Hell of a Heaven]]: "The Hunt" [[Playing
* [[Henpecked Husband]]: Henry Bemis, in "Time Enough at Last
* [[Here We Go Again]]: {{spoiler|"Judgment Night
**
**
* [[Hijacked
* [[Historical Domain Character]]:
** [[Abraham Lincoln]] appears briefly in "Back There" and "The Passersby".
** [[Adolf Hitler]] is used as a character in {{spoiler|"The Man in the Bottle" and "He's Alive"}}.
** [[
* [[
* [[Honest
* [[Hope Spot]]: "Five Characters in Search of an Exit" ends with one.
** "The Midnight Sun" does a rather cruel one. Over the course of the episode, [[Apocalypse How|the Earth is getting closer and closer to the Sun, and everyone is pretty much doomed.]] But wait,
* [[Hot
* [[How We Got Here]]: "To Serve Man".
* [[Human Aliens]]: Part of the plot of "People Are Alike All Over".
**
* [[Human Ladder]]: "Five Characters in Search of an Exit
* [[Human Popsicle]]: "The Rip Van Winkle Caper
* [[Humans Are
* [[Humans Are Cthulhu]]: "The Little People".
* [[I'm a Humanitarian]]: {{spoiler|"To Serve Man
* [[Immortality Immorality]]: "Love Live Walter Jameson", "Queen of the Nile".
* [[Imported Alien Phlebotinum]]
* [[Instant Plastic Surgery]]: The episode "Number 12 Looks Just Like You" explains there is a process called The Transformation. It will make anyone beautiful from a limited set of body types and looks, and extend their lifespan. Marilyn, the protagonist who is "pretty" but not beautiful, shocks her family and the doctor wanting to operate her by saying that she doesn't want to look beautiful. She says that she wants to stay as herself, in mind and body. {{spoiler|Sadly, the doctor and nurses take the choice away from her, turning her into a vapid Barbie.}}
* [[Instrumental Theme Tune]]: There were actually two of them. The first season featured a haunting, string-laden theme composed by [[Bernard Herrmann]]; this was replaced in Season 2 with a different and much more familiar theme (featuring the iconic high-pitched four-note guitar riff) composed by Marius Constant.
* [[Interactive Narrator]]: At the end of "A World of His Own
* [[Ironic Death]]: "A Most Unusual Camera". After the {{spoiler|main characters}} die, the waiter smugly counts the number of bodies: {{spoiler|"One... two... three... ''FOUR?!''}} Cue screaming.
** The {{spoiler|Chancellor}} in "The Obsolete Man".
* [[Ironic Hell]]: "A Game of Pool" and "A Nice Place to Visit".
* [[Is This a Joke?]]: Standard Explanation for anything unusual and unexplainable.
* [[
* [[Kafka Komedy]]: "Time Enough
* [[Karma Houdini]]: This trope is [[Averted]] through most of the series, but shows up in some fifth season episodes (such as {{spoiler|"What's in the Box?" and "
* [[Karmic Twist Ending]]: Former [[Trope Namer]] as ''Twilight Zone Twist''.
* [[Large Ham]]: More often than not, an episode will have at ''least'' one.
** [[
** [[William Shatner]] stars up in two episodes.
* [[Laser
* [[Life Drinker]]:
** One episode featured a man who found that he could obtain abstract or otherwise normally non-transferable attributes from other people by simply making the deal with them. Among other attributes, he restored his youth by "buying" it from younger men who thought him to be a kook giving them money for nothing. He only took a year from each man, but was able to become young again. Incidentally, he was only an old man because he had previously sold his own youth to an elderly millionaire (he came out financially ahead after the exchanges were complete).
** Another episode involves a movie queen who retains her youthful appearance by stealing the life force of others.
** "Queen of the Nile". A woman uses a scarab beetle to drain the life force of men so she can maintain her eternal youth. It's implied that she's the actual Cleopatra of Egypt.
* [[Lilliputians]]: "The Little People
* [[Look Ma, No Plane]]: "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet".
* [[Love Potion]]: "The Chaser".
* [[Magic Realism]]
* [[Mandatory Twist Ending]]: The [[Twist Ending]] was a major staple of the series that earned the show a reputation for this, though it wasn't quite as "mandatory" as it's remembered as being.
* [[Matter of Life and Death]]: "Perchance to Dream".
* [[Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane]]: "The Thirty-Fathom Grave".
* [[A Mind Is a Terrible Thing
* [[Mobile Kiosk]]: "One for the Angels". Lew Bookman has a mobile pitch: a suitcase with extendable legs. When he finishes a pitch, he collapses the legs back into the suitcase and moves on.
* [[Motor Mouth]]: McNulty, the main character of the episode "A Kind of Stop Watch".
* [[Mundane Wish]]: Appears in "The Man in the Bottle". The couples' first wish (out of four) is to have a pane of glass in their shop repaired, in order to [[God Test|test the genie's power]] first. The couple then proceed to waste their remaining wishes, but in the end console themselves with the thought that at least the glass got repaired. Guess what happens next.
* [[Murder Ballad]]: Used as a [[Plot Device]] in "Come Wander with Me".
* [[Murderous Mannequin]]: Subverted in "The After Hours"; Marsha is, at first, understandably terrified when the mannequins come to life, but it soon becomes apparent that they are friendly, and only want
* [[My Car Hates Me]]: "You Drive", "The Hitch-Hiker".
* [[Never Sleep Again]]: "Perchance to Dream", "Ninety Years Without Slumbering"
* [[The Night That Never Ends]]: "I Am the Night
* [[No Dialogue Episode]]: "The Invaders
* [[Nostalgia Ain't Like It Used to Be]]: "The Incredible World of Horace Ford".
* [[Not-So-Imaginary Friend]]: "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet", "Mirror Image".
* [[No Time to Explain]]: "Passage on the ''Lady Anne''". {{spoiler|As it turns out, it's a ship only meant for dying/wanting to die people}}.
* [[On One Condition]]: "The Masks", "Still Valley".
* [[Ontological Inertia]]: "The 7th Is Made Up of Phantoms".
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* [[Orson Welles]]: The main reason Serling ultimately became the [[Narrator]]. CBS and the Sponsers wanted Welles to do it, but he was too expensive.
* [[Panthera Awesome]]: "{{spoiler|The Jungle}}".
* [[Peggy Sue]]: "Of Late I Think of Cliffordville".
* [[Pilot Movie]]: In 1958, Rod Serling wrote a teleplay ("The Time Element") which he hoped to turn into a weekly anthology series. It's often included in the series' canon as its lost pilot episode.
* [[Poorly
* [[Pound of Flesh Twist]]: In "The Rip Van Winkle Caper", a group of gold thieves put themselves to sleep for 100 years to escape the cops, only to awaken to a future where gold is worthless.
* [[Pow Zap Wham Cam]]: Used in episodes such as "Third
* [[Pragmatic Adaptation]]: Episodes adapted from short stories were often massaged a bit. In Damon Knight's short story "To Serve Man", the alien representatives are described as looking like pigs. The producers thought the audience would find this too silly, so the alien makeup is the more conventional [[My Brain Is Big|tall-head]] variety.
* [[Prophetic Fallacy]]
* [[Reality Warper]]: Anthony Fremont in "It's a Good Life", and Gregory West in "A World of His Own", though the latter needs a dictation machine.
* [["The Reason You Suck" Speech]]: "The Masks".
* [[Replacement Scrappy]]: In-Universe example with "I Sing
* [[Ret
* [[Ridiculously
* [[Rule of Three]]: In "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?", said Martian has three arms.
* [[Satan]]: Popular character. Played by Julie Newmar (in "Of Late I Think of Cliffordville") and Burgess Meredith (in "Printer's Devil") among others.
* [[Screw Politeness, I'm a Senior!]]: Jason Foster in
* [[Sealed Evil in
{{quote|
* [[Self
* [[
* [[Shoot the Shaggy Dog]]: {{spoiler|"The Time Element
** Nonlethal version in {{spoiler|"The Big Tall Wish"}}.
* [[Silence Is Golden]]: "The Invaders", written by [[
* [[Slept Through the Apocalypse]]
* [[Sliding Scale of Beauty]]: The show [[Playing
** Also played with in "Number Twelve Looks Just Like You", in which a young Common Beauty is described by others as "hideous" because she hasn't traded her original appearance in for a carbon-copy World Class Beauty body.
* [[Sociopathic Soldier]]: Lieutentant Katell in "A Quality of Mercy" wants to be one, wanting to prove himself and completely destroy the enemy (in this case, the Japanese during [[World War II]]). The [[Karmic Twist Ending]] forces him to the other side, where a gung-ho Japanese soldier does the same thing he was about to do to some wounded Americans hiding in the very same cave. He doesn't like it.
* [[Something Completely Different]]: "Cavender Is Coming", a [[Poorly
** Also, the comedy episodes, such as
** For the episode "An
** For Season 2, six episodes were [[Video Inside, Film Outside|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: "The Lateness of the Hour", "[[Christmas Episode|The Night of the Meek]]", "The Whole Truth", "Twenty-Two", "Static", and "Long-Distance Call".
** The entire fourth season which CBS expanded into an hour, creating scripts that were for the most part overly padded, and signaled to many the ''Zone'' [[Jump the Shark]] moment.
* [[Space Whale Aesop]]: "Stopover
* [[Speculative Fiction]]: The [[Sci Fi]] elements and stories.
* [[Spooky Silent Library]]: "Time Enough at Last" ends with a lone man, an empty library, and a broken pair of glasses. Possibly better known by now through parodies than through the original.
* [[Stable Time Loop]]: "The Last Flight" and "A Hundred Yards
* [[Stock Footage]]: The countdown and launch footage from "I Shot an Arrow into the Air" was reused in "People Are Alike All Over".
* [[Stopped Clock]]: "Where is Everybody?".
* [[Subtext]]: "The Fugitive" might also seem creepy to modern eyes. Especially when it's revealed that the elderly man eventually marries the little girl. {{spoiler|Of course, he's a shapeshifting alien who's actually handsome and can take on a younger form and he waited until she got older before marrying her, but it still [[Wife Husbandry|sounds a bit squicky
* [[Sufficiently Advanced Alien]]
* [[Survivor Guilt]]: Suffered by James Embry in "King Nine Will Not Return".
** Happens again in "The Thirty-Fathom Grave".
* [[Take That]]: The entirety of "Showdown with Rance McGrew" against [[The Western|the TV westerns]] of the time. It also serves as a deconstruction of sorts. Serling hated the Westerns of the time, deeming them too unrealistic and predictable, and later went on to make a [[Western]] series (''The Loner'') himself.
** The hour long episode "The Bard" features a hack writer who, while
* [[
* [[This Isn't Heaven]]: "A Nice Place to Visit
* [[Through the Eyes of Madness]]: A number of episodes leave open the question of how much of what the audience sees is real. Most overtly explored in the episode "The Arrival", which ends with Rod Serling outright asking the audience to decide whether we've been watching the main character's mental breakdown or his encounter with the supernatural, and "The Mirror" is much the same.
* [[Time Stands Still]]: "Still Valley" and "A Kind of a Stopwatch."
* [[Time Travel]]: "Walking Distance
* [[Title Drop]]: Every episode opens and closes with a narration from Rod Serling. In many of the opening narrations, and in every closing one, the narration ends with "The Twilight Zone
** In the original broadcast of "Night of the Meek", Serling expresses a holiday greeting after the "...in the Twilight Zone" statement, which was generally edited out in syndication.
* [[Title Sequence Replacement]]: The first season opening is often pasted over by the second season opening in syndicated reruns.
* [[Tomato in
* [[Tomato Surprise]]: Too many to list.
* [[To Serve Man]]: {{spoiler|[[Trope Namer]]}}.
* [[Shout
** A running joke in "The Bard" (in which a hack would be
* [[Town
* [[Tragic Hero]]: Captain Benteen in "On Thursday We Leave
* [[Truman Show Plot]]: "A World of Difference".
* [[Twenty Minutes Into the Future]]: Some episodes could get pretty bad about this. Pity that by the 1990's we hadn't even traveled to the nearest galaxy yet.
** The episode "The Elegy" lays out a distinct timeline; a trio of spacemen from 2185 discover a cemetery on a distant asteroid consisting of a replica of daily life on Earth that was supposedly started in 1973, and mention a nuclear war having happened in the 1980's.
* [[Twist Ending]]: Became infamous for this sort of thing.
* [[Un Paused]]: "A Kind of a Stopwatch", until {{spoiler|[[Karmic Twist Ending|the stopwatch breaks
* [[Urban Fantasy]]: Anything that takes place in a city, natch.
* [[Video Inside, Film Outside]]: The six Season 2 "videotape episodes"; see [[Something Completely Different]] above.
* [[Villainous Breakdown]]: Happens many times.
* [[Wait Here]]: In the episode "Still Valley", a Confederate scout gives orders to his partner.
{{quote|
* [[Wasteland Elder]]: "On Thursday We Leave
* [[Water Source Tampering]]: In "Black Leather Jackets", a group of aliens is sent to Earth to [[Kill All Humans]] by contaminating city water reservoirs with deadly bacteria.
* [[We Come in Peace, Shoot
* [[Well
* [[Whack a Mole]]: "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street" and "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?".
* [[What Did I Do Last Night?]]: "Stopover in a Quiet Town".
* [[What Measure Is a Non
* [[Where Are They Now? Epilogue]]: {{spoiler|"I Sing the Body Electric
* [[Who Wants to Live Forever?]]: "Long Live Walter Jameson", "Escape Clause".
* [[Wife Husbandry]]: "{{spoiler|The Fugitive}}".
* [[The Wild West]]: "Mr. Denton on Doomsday
* [[World of Symbolism]]: Some of the more esoteric [[The Reveal|reveals]] involve this.
* [[World War Two]]: "Judgment Night
* [[Worthless Yellow Rocks]]: "{{spoiler|The Rip Van Winkle Caper}}".
* [[Would Hit a Girl]]: The
* [[You Can't Fight Fate]]: Or at least, you can't change the past. Several episodes revolve around characters trying to avert disasters, but failing or only making small changes.
* [[You Have to Believe Me]]: A common occurrence in the series, but especially in "Hocus-Pocus and Frisby".
* [[You Look Familiar]]
* [[Your Mind Makes It Real]]: {{spoiler|"Perchance to Dream"}}.
* [[You Wake Up in a Room]]: "Stopover in a Quiet Town" and "Five Characters in Search of an Exit".
* [[Zeerust]]: A lot of outer space-themed episodes take place in the year 2000 or the late 90's.
* [[Aborted Arc]]: The movie had this in "Time Out", as [[Fatal Method Acting|Vic Morrow's death]] changed the ending from "protagonist goes back to his time learning his lesson" into [[Downer Ending|"protagonist goes back to the 1940s and is sent to a concentration camps"]].
* [[Balancing
* [[Be Careful What You Wish For]]: "The Leprechaun-Artist
* [[The Blank]]: "A Matter of Minutes"
* [[Color Me Black]]: Done in [[The Movie]], and an episode of the
* [[Credit Card Plot]]: The 1980's episode "The Card
* [[Dark Is Not Evil]]: Death in "One Night At Mercy"
* [[Dead All Along]]: {{spoiler|"Kentucky Rye"}} [1980s Revival].
* [[Dead to Begin With]]: "Take My Life...Please!" [1980s Revival].
* [[Deal
* [[Divine Intervention]]: "The Executions of Grady Finch" [
* [[Don't Fear the Reaper]]: "Rendezvous in a Dark Place
* [[Doppelganger]]: "Shatterday", "The Once and Future King", "The World Next Door", "The Road Less Traveled", "Something in the Walls" [1980s Revival].
* [[Dream Apocalypse]]: The remake of "Shadow Play" [1980s Revival].
* [[Dystopia]]: {{spoiler|"Examination Day"}}, "To See the Invisible Man" [1980s Revival].
* [[Earn Your Happy Ending]]: "Gabe's Story"
* [[Eldritch Location]]: Anthony's house looks normal (even though it's based on a subtle cartoon design), its upper floor is gray and very Burton-esque with a portrait of a family of blank faces.
* [[Fantastic Time Management]]: In the 1980s episode "A Little Peace and Quiet", a harried housewife finds a magic sundial that allows her to stop and restart time. She uses it to literally make time for herself, enjoying a peaceful breakfast or leisurely shopping for groceries while time is stopped for everyone else. {{spoiler|Everything is perfect until nuclear war breaks out and she stops time while a missile is 10 feet above her head. She will have to choose between dying with everyone else and living her life forever trapped between two instants of time}}.
* [[The Film of the Series]]: Released in 1983. Sadly, it's best remembered for the deaths of Vic Morrow and two child actors doing production.
* [[Go Mad
* [[The Grim Reaper]]: "Welcome to Winfield
* [[Hair
* [[Haunted Technology]]: "Her Pilgrim Soul" [1980s Revival].
* [[Henpecked Husband]]: "Button, Button" [1980s Revival].
* [[Here We Go Again]]: "A Day in Beaumont
* [[The Hidden Hour]]: "A Matter of Minutes" and "Paladin of the Lost Hour"
* [[Historical Domain Character]]:
** [[
** [[John F. Kennedy]] and Nikita Krushchev play important roles in "Profiles in Silver" [1980s revival].
* [[
* [[Human Aliens]]: "Small Talent for War" [1980s Revival].
* [[Human Popsicle]]: "Quarantine" [1980s Revival].
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* [[Lighthouse Point]]: "The Beacon" [1980s Revival]. Another episode concerned a lighthouse that was sort of a waypoint on the afterlife, where the newly dead arrived before being sent on their way.
* [[The Little Shop That Wasn't There Yesterday]]: "Wong's Lost and Found Emporium" [1980s Revival].
* [[Living Doll Collector]]: An episode of the
* [[Living Shadow]]: "The Shadow Man" [1980s Revival].
* [[Lonely Doll Girl]]: Danielle in "The Collection", to the point of being a [[Living Doll Collector]].
* [[Magical Negro]]: In the "Kick The Can" segment of the movie.
* [[Message in
* [[Mirror Universe]]: "The World Next Door",
* [[Murderous Mannequin]]: The remake of the "The After Hours" [1980s Revival].
* [[Mythology Gag]]: The ''Twilight Zone: The Movie'' opening, referencing many episodes of the series and debating if "A Kind of Stopwatch" was a ''Zone'' or an ''[[Outer Limits]]''.
* [[Not
* [[Ontological Mystery]]: "Matter of Minutes" [1980s Revival].
* [[Opening Shout
* [[Passing the Torch]]: {{spoiler|"Paladin of the Lost Hour"}} [1980s Revival].
* [[Plucky Office Girl]]: Karen Billings, played by Pam Dawber in the ''New [[Twilight Zone]]'' episode "But Can She Type".
* [[Powered by a Forsaken Child|Powered by a Rebellious Child]]: The Ever-Green community, where they turn some teens into {{spoiler|''red'' plant fertilizer}} disguised as a 'reeducation camp' especially for them.
* [[Race Lift]]: The 2002 revival was targeted towards a more African-American audience; the host was black as were a lot of the main characters in its episodes, and it featured episodes such as a racist white man waking up black. [[Tropes Are Not Bad]], of course, and being on [[UPN]] might have had something to do with it.
* [[Recursive Canon]]: Played with in [[The Movie]]'s opening sequence, in which characters discuss the old TV series before a [[Twist Ending]] reveals they're ''in'' the Zone. Granted, if any franchise was tailor-made to mess around with this stuff, this one's it!
* [[The Remake]]: Many episodes from the original series were later remade, including "Kick the Can
* [[Remake Cameo]]: Burgess Meredith as [[The Movie]]'s [[Narrator]].
** Rod Serling's wife Carol had a cameo as an airline passenger in the movie's version of "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet."
** Bill Mumy plays a diner patron in "It's a Good Life
** Images of Serling are used in the openings of both TV remakes.
* [[Revival]]: There have been four ''[[Twilight Zone]]'' revivals in total: The two latter-day TV versions noted above, the film also mentioned above, and a [[Radio]] version that's still in production.
* [[Stable Time Loop]]: "One Life, Furnished in Early Poverty", "The Once and Future King", "The Convict's Piano" [1980s Revival].
* [[Subtext]]: "Extra Innings" [1980s Revival] had a washed-up former baseball star who was good friends with a tween or teen girl. Nothing too creepy, yet. He and she trade cards a lot, and she gets him this 1910 card of a rookie who looked just like him and had exactly the same stats as him. Then, he discovers that the card allows him to take control of the rookie on the card, which also takes him back to 1910. Then, the next day, he tells the girl about it, and at first she doesn't believe him. When he shows her the stats, she believes him, as they have changed. Then, when he takes her back in time with him, before the card opens the portal, he puts his arm around her. Between her face there and the dialog, which sounds like it came from a [[Very Special Episode]] about child molestation, the creepy subtext is amazing.
* [[
* [[Tall Tale]]: "Hocus-Pocus and Frisby" features a man who continually tells tall tales. When he tells them he was abducted by aliens, they believe he is just [[Crying Wolf]]
* [[Tanks for The Memories]]: "The Mind of Simon Foster" [1980s Revival].
* [[Time Stands Still]]: "A Little Peace and Quiet" [1980s Revival].
* [[Time Travel]]: "One Life, Furnished in Early Poverty
* [[Tomato in
* [[Toon Town]] and [[Toon Physics]]: In [[The Movie]], Anthony brings cartoon characters to life and sends one person into a cartoon world to be eaten.
* [[Town
* [[Truman Show Plot]]: "Special Service" [1980s Revival].
* [[Un Paused]]: Among others, "A Little Peace and Quiet" in the 1985 premiere. There, a typical 80's henpecked housewife (Penny) found an golden amulet that allowed her to stop and re-start time at her own beck and call (through the commands "Shut up!" and "Start talking!"); she abuses this privilege- until the very next night, when nuclear war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union now breaks out. (It is never ''explicitly'' stated, but it was at this point, too late, where Penny now realizes the ''true'' purposes of her gold amulet... Freezing time to get two rivals-
* [[The Vietnam War]]: TOS "In Praise of Pip", "Time Out" (the Vic Morrow segment of [[The Movie]]), and the 80s revival episodes "Nightcrawlers" and "The Road Less
* [[Wishplosion]]: "I of Newton" [1980s Revival].
* [[Wrong Turn At Albuquerque]]: "The Beacon".
* [[You Monster!]]: In the 2003 revival of the series, Anthony's own mother calls him a monster after all the years she had to suffer under her son's godlike powers.
* [[You Will Be Beethoven]]: "Profile in Silver" and "The Once and Future King" [1980s Revival].
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Guess what?
{{reflist}}
{{TV Guide's 50 Greatest}}
{{TV Guide's Top Cult Shows Ever}}
{{Best in TV: The Greatest TV Shows of Our Time}}
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