96 Fun Facts About Twilight Zone

In The Twilight Zone's 'The Howling Man', who is the prisoner the monks keep locked in a cell?

The Devil: the traveller who frees him later recaptures him, only for his housekeeper to open the door again.

In The Twilight Zone's 'The After Hours', what does shopper Marsha White discover she really is?

Marsha is a mannequin: the store's mannequins take turns spending a month among humans, and she overstayed hers after forgetting what she was.

In The Twilight Zone's 'Time Enough at Last', which actor plays bookworm Henry Bemis?

Burgess Meredith plays Henry Bemis, whose wife cruelly crosses out the text on every page of his books.

In 'To Serve Man', what does the alien book of that title turn out to be?

The book is a cookbook: the nine-foot aliens had promised to end hunger and war on Earth, and were fattening humans up to eat them.

What is the name of the towering alien race in 'To Serve Man'?

The Kanamits win humanity over by handing out cheap energy and turning barren deserts into farmland.

In 'Nightmare at 20,000 Feet', William Shatner's character sees a creature doing what?

Robert Wilson sees a gremlin sabotaging the plane's wing, and after landing, as he is carried off, the camera shows viewers the torn engine housing no one else has noticed.

Which future Superman director directed the original Twilight Zone episode 'Nightmare at 20,000 Feet'?

Richard Donner directed it, and William Shatner's Robert Wilson has just left a sanitarium after a breakdown that began on a flight, so his alarm looks like a relapse.

In The Twilight Zone's 'Living Doll', what is the name of the wind-up doll that torments Telly Savalas's character?

Talky Tina's sweet catchphrase turns into threats, and Erich finally trips over her on the stairs and falls to his death.

In 'It's a Good Life', where does six-year-old Anthony Fremont send people who displease him?

Anthony wishes them into the cornfield, so the townspeople hide their fear, think only happy thoughts and tell him everything he does is 'good'.

In 'It's a Good Life', in which fictional town has the rest of the world disappeared?

Peaksville, Ohio, is all that's left, and its people never learn whether the rest of the world was destroyed or the town was taken away.

In The Twilight Zone's 'Eye of the Beholder', what do the hospital doctors and nurses look like when finally revealed?

Pig-snouted, twisted humanoids surround a patient, Janet Tyler, who is beautiful by our standards; two actresses played her, one bandaged, one unmasked.

In The Twilight Zone's 'The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street', what first sets off the neighbours' spiral into paranoia?

A power outage sets the street on edge, and the twist reveals aliens on a nearby hill who cut the power so the humans will destroy themselves.

In The Twilight Zone's 'The Hitch-Hiker', what does Nan Adams finally realise about herself?

She has been dead since the accident: her car blew a tire in Pennsylvania days earlier, and the hitchhiker, apparently Death, is waiting for her.

In 'The Invaders', the tiny spacemen menacing Agnes Moorehead's farm woman turn out to be from where?

The 'invaders' are astronauts from Earth; Agnes Moorehead never speaks, and the only dialogue is the astronaut's radio warning about a planet of giants.

In 'Nick of Time', William Shatner becomes obsessed with what in a small-town diner?

The penny fortune-telling machine, a 'Mystic Seer' napkin holder, answers yes or no; Don's wife talks him into leaving, but the next couple at the table can't stop asking it.

In 'A Stop at Willoughby', where does the exhausted commuter find himself when his train stops?

Gart Williams wakes in a deserted 19th-century railway car at Willoughby, but in reality he jumped from the train, and his body leaves in a hearse from Willoughby & Son.

In 'Kick the Can', residents of which retirement home discover the secret of youth?

Sunnyvale Rest's residents turn young again by playing kick the can, but Ben, who refused to join them, is left behind begging to be made young too.

In The Twilight Zone's 'The Midnight Sun', what does Norma dream is happening to the Earth?

It is falling into the Sun in Norma's fever dream, but when she wakes, the planet is really drifting away from the Sun and freezing.

Who directed 'The Masks', the only episode of the original Twilight Zone directed by a woman?

Ida Lupino directed 'The Masks', about a dying man who makes his greedy heirs wear grotesque masks of their true natures until midnight.

What was the title of The Twilight Zone's first episode, broadcast on October 2, 1959?

'Where Is Everybody?' strands Earl Holliman's airman in an empty town that turns out to exist only in his mind.

Which composer wrote the guitar theme that The Twilight Zone introduced in season two?

Marius Constant wrote short stock music cues for CBS, and the network's music director spliced two of them together to make the theme.

Which composer wrote The Twilight Zone's original season-one theme, later replaced?

Bernard Herrmann wrote it, but for season two CBS rejected every new theme it commissioned, Herrmann's among them, and spliced together stock music cues instead.

What was the plot of the 1957 pilot pitch 'The Time Element'?

William Bendix played a man who dreams he is in 1941 Honolulu, trying to warn of the Pearl Harbor attack; CBS shelved it until Desilu Playhouse aired it in 1958, and its success got The Twilight Zone made.

Which legendary filmmaker did CBS reportedly offer The Twilight Zone's hosting job after its first season?

Orson Welles turned it down, and in a reversal CBS expanded Rod Serling's role, putting him on camera to introduce each story.

Which season of The Twilight Zone switched to hour-long episodes?

The fourth season, in 1963, ran hour-long episodes because CBS had dropped the show from its fall 1962 schedule, then brought it back mid-season to fill an hour slot.

What did Rod Serling do with his ownership share of The Twilight Zone after it ended?

He sold it to CBS, giving up the royalties he would have earned as the show kept airing in syndication.

What was Rod Serling's later anthology series, which debuted in 1969?

On Night Gallery, Serling lacked the creative control he had on The Twilight Zone, and producer Jack Laird overrode him.

In which upstate New York city did Rod Serling spend most of his youth?

Rod Serling grew up in Binghamton, and the hometown park in 'Walking Distance', with its carousel, is said to draw on the city's Recreation Park.

Which teleplay won Rod Serling his first Emmy?

'Patterns', a live Kraft Television Theatre drama about a boardroom power struggle, was so popular that it was performed live again a month later.

Which two producers made the 1983 film Twilight Zone: The Movie?

Steven Spielberg and John Landis produced it; Landis wrote and directed an original segment, while Spielberg chose to remake 'Kick the Can'.

Which actor was killed with two child actors in a helicopter crash while filming Twilight Zone: The Movie?

Vic Morrow and child actors Myca Dinh Le and Renee Shin-Yi Chen died while the film's opening segment was being shot, and its director and four others were later tried for manslaughter and acquitted.

Who developed the 2019 revival of The Twilight Zone for CBS All Access, alongside Simon Kinberg and Marco Ramirez?

Jordan Peele's and Kinberg's companies chose to end it after two seasons, though the streamer wanted more, saying they had told the stories they wanted to tell.

Disney's Twilight Zone drop ride is set in which fictional building?

The ride is set in the Hollywood Tower Hotel, a fictional hotel whose elevator passengers vanished when a violent storm struck the building in 1939.

Which Marvel team's ride took over the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror's building at Disney California Adventure in 2017?

Guardians of the Galaxy – Mission: Breakout! reused the tower's drop-ride system, recasting the old haunted hotel as the Collector's fortress.

Which two writers joined Rod Serling on The Twilight Zone from season one?

Charles Beaumont and Richard Matheson sold Serling stories and original scripts, and in season two the trio began admitting new writers such as George Clayton Johnson.

Which cost-cutting experiment did CBS impose on six season-two episodes of The Twilight Zone?

Shooting them on videotape made location shooting impractical, and the experiment was never tried again.

In 'Number 12 Looks Just Like You', what happens to everyone upon reaching adulthood?

Their bodies are surgically remodelled into chosen designs, and Marilyn, who refuses, ends up in the operating room anyway and comes out remodelled like everyone else.

In 'The Masks', a dying man forces his relatives to wear grotesque masks during which celebration?

Jason Foster makes his greedy heirs wear the masks until midnight on Mardi Gras, and when they unmask, their faces have taken on the masks' hideous features.

Which FCC chairman praised The Twilight Zone in his 1961 'vast wasteland' speech about television?

Newton Minow called The Twilight Zone 'dramatic and moving', then warned that such shows were the exception on a 'vast wasteland' of television.

In 'Walking Distance', whom does Martin Sloan meet when he revisits his hometown?

Martin Sloan finds himself as a boy on the park carousel, and his father, realising who he is, urges him to stop looking back and look ahead.

Which Twilight Zone episode was an Oscar-winning French short film?

'An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge' follows a condemned Civil War prisoner whose escape home to his wife turns out to be a fantasy in the instant before he dies.

Which hour-long sitcom replaced The Twilight Zone on CBS's fall 1962 schedule, only to be replaced by it in January?

Fair Exchange was cut back to half an hour and moved to a different time slot once The Twilight Zone returned.

In The Twilight Zone's 'The Obsolete Man', what job gets Romney Wordsworth sentenced to death?

Wordsworth is a librarian in a State that has banned books, and when he traps the Chancellor with his execution bomb, the Chancellor's cowardly plea gets him declared obsolete too.

In the radio-drama version of The Twilight Zone licensed in 2002, which actor takes Rod Serling's old role as narrator?

Stacy Keach recorded new opening and closing narrations because producer Carl Amari chose not to reuse Serling's, and each episode runs about 40 minutes.

Besides the Fourth of July, on which holiday does the Syfy channel traditionally run its marathon of The Twilight Zone?

New Year's: Syfy has even aired episodes of the show that were long left out of its syndication packages.

Who played the unmasked Janet Tyler in 'Eye of the Beholder'?

Donna Douglas played Janet unmasked, but Maxine Stuart voiced her under the bandages, since director Douglas Heyes cast those scenes by ear, for sympathetic voices.

Which future movie star plays Death, disguised as a wounded policeman, in The Twilight Zone's 'Nothing in the Dark'?

Robert Redford was years from fame when he played Harold Beldon, the shot officer an old woman lets into her flat. She has hidden from Death for years, only to find him gentle.

Which science-fiction film, famous for its twist ending, did The Twilight Zone's creator Rod Serling co-write?

Planet of the Apes kept the twist ending from Rod Serling's drafts even after Michael Wilson was brought in to rewrite his script. It is loosely based on a French novel by Pierre Boulle.

Which star of The Honeymooners plays a drunken department-store Santa in The Twilight Zone's 'The Night of the Meek'?

Art Carney plays Henry Corwin, a sacked store Santa who finds a bag that produces any gift he is asked for. By the end of the night he has become the real thing.

Which silent-film comedian plays a janitor who time-travels from 1890 in The Twilight Zone's 'Once Upon a Time'?

Buster Keaton plays Woodrow Mulligan, who tries on a time helmet and is flung to 1961. The opening and closing scenes are staged as a tribute to his silent comedies.

Which comedian plays clumsy Agnes Grep in 'Cavender Is Coming', the only Twilight Zone episode with a laugh track?

Carol Burnett plays Agnes, whose bumbling guardian angel has 24 hours to improve her life. The laughter was added because the episode doubled as a pilot for a comedy series about the angel.

Which science-fiction novelist wrote The Twilight Zone's 'I Sing the Body Electric', about a robot grandmother?

Ray Bradbury wrote the series several scripts, but this tale of a factory-built grandmother was the only one filmed. He later reworked it as a short story named after a Walt Whitman poem.

In The Twilight Zone's 'People Are Alike All Over', where does astronaut Sam Conrad end up after Martians welcome him?

Caged in a zoo, Conrad finds the cosy house the Martians built him has bars where one wall should be. Roddy McDowall, a former child actor, plays the astronaut.

Which former child star is the only actor on screen in The Twilight Zone's 'The Last Night of a Jockey'?

Mickey Rooney carries the half-hour alone as Grady, a jockey banned for doping horses. Granted one wish, Grady asks to be big, then grows too tall to ride just as his ban is lifted.

Which rock band recorded new theme music for the 1985 revival of The Twilight Zone?

Grateful Dead worked with keyboardist Merl Saunders, weaving the original guitar riff into the new title music. The band also supplied incidental music for several episodes.

In The Twilight Zone's 'Five Characters in Search of an Exit', what are the clown, major and ballerina really?

Dolls in a barrel: the cylinder is a toy collection bin for a girls' orphanage, and the deafening clang was a charity worker's bell. Lookalike dolls of each actor were made for the final shots.

Which future star plays a street-corner neo-Nazi coached by a shadowy Hitler in The Twilight Zone's 'He's Alive'?

Dennis Hopper plays Peter Vollmer, a failing rabble-rouser whose shadowy mentor finally steps into the light. Rod Serling also wrote a longer, feature-film version of the script, but it was never made.

Which future Star Trek actor stars in The Twilight Zone's 'The Encounter', kept out of US syndication for decades?

George Takei plays a young Japanese American shut in an attic with a bitter war veteran and a captured sword. Racial overtones kept the episode out of American syndication until 2016.

Which Bavarian concentration camp does a former SS captain revisit in The Twilight Zone's 'Deaths-Head Revisited'?

Dachau is where Gunther Lutze returns as a nostalgic tourist, only to be tried by the ghosts of inmates he tormented. Rod Serling wrote it in reaction to the Eichmann trial, then under way.

In The Twilight Zone's 1963 episode 'In Praise of Pip', a bookie's soldier son lies dying in which country?

Vietnam was still an early-phase conflict for Americans when the episode aired in 1963. The father, a crooked small-time bookie, prays to trade his own life for his son's.

Which fantasy novelist took a staff writing job on the 1985 revival of The Twilight Zone after a novel of his flopped?

George R. R. Martin joined the revival after The Armageddon Rag sold so badly that he considered going into real estate. He rose from staff writer to executive story consultant.

Which season-one Twilight Zone episode ends with Rod Serling walking on camera, only to be erased by its playwright?

A World of His Own stars Keenan Wynn as a writer whose dictated characters come to life until he burns their tape. Serling, otherwise only heard inside that season's stories, is the last to vanish.

In The Twilight Zone's 'The Silence', how does Jamie Tennyson go a whole year without speaking?

He had his vocal cords cut before the wager began, hiding the scar under scarves for a year. The twist bites twice: the clubman who made the bet admits he lost his fortune years ago.

In The Twilight Zone's 'The Fever', what does miserly Franklin Gibbs hear calling his name on a free Las Vegas trip?

A slot machine hooks Franklin after a drunk hands him a silver dollar, then seems to roll down the hallway after him. His wife had won the holiday in a slogan contest.

In The Twilight Zone's 'Twenty Two', a hospitalised dancer keeps dreaming that a nurse beckons her into which room?

The morgue is room 22 in her nightmare, a number the dancer has no way of knowing. Once discharged she is booked on Flight 22 and bolts from the boarding stairs before take-off.

In The Twilight Zone's 'Back There', which assassin drugs time traveller Peter Corrigan to keep him quiet?

John Wilkes Booth, calling himself Jonathan Wellington, talks the police into releasing Corrigan and then sedates him. A handkerchief with the initials JWB gives him away too late.

Which science-fiction award did The Twilight Zone win for each of its first three seasons?

Hugo voters honoured the series' whole body of work each year. The drama prize usually goes to a single television episode instead.

Which anthology series aired 'The Time Element' in 1958, the hit that let Rod Serling launch The Twilight Zone?

Desilu Playhouse producer Bert Granet found the script after it had been rejected and shelved. Granet later came back as a producer on the series his gamble made possible.

At which liberal arts college, his alma mater, did Rod Serling teach when The Twilight Zone seemed cancelled in 1962?

Antioch College in Yellow Springs had enrolled Serling on the G.I. Bill after the war. He taught writing and drama there in 1962–63 while drafting the screenplay of Seven Days in May.

Whose 1955 murder in Mississippi inspired a Rod Serling script so heavily censored that he turned to The Twilight Zone?

Emmett Till's killing was the model for 'Noon on Doomsday', but the story was moved out of the South and its victim changed. Serling decided science fiction would let him say more.

Which Odd Couple star is tied for the most leading roles on the original Twilight Zone, with four episodes?

Jack Klugman starred in 'A Passage for Trumpet', 'A Game of Pool', 'Death Ship' and 'In Praise of Pip'. No actor on the series had more leading roles.

Which horror author's short story 'Gramma' was adapted for the 1985 revival of The Twilight Zone by Harlan Ellison?

Stephen King's tale is mostly a frightened boy's inner monologue, so the staff writers thought it almost impossible to film. The network had already bought the rights, and the job fell to Ellison.

In The Twilight Zone's 'Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?', what feature marks the diner's cook as a Venusian?

A third eye gives the cook away, trumping the three-armed Martian scout who thought he had fooled a busload of stranded passengers. Venus, the cook says, has already intercepted the Martian fleet.

In The Twilight Zone, bank clerk Hector Poole can suddenly hear thoughts after a coin he tosses does what?

Lands on its edge: the one-in-a-million toss lets the timid clerk hear what colleagues really think of him. The gift vanishes when he knocks the coin over that afternoon.

In The Twilight Zone's 'A Most Unusual Camera', what do the photographs from a stolen antique camera turn out to show?

What is about to happen shows in each self-developing print, which the thieves use to clean up at the racetrack. Too late, they learn the camera allows only ten pictures per owner.

In The Twilight Zone's 'A Kind of a Stopwatch', what leaves Patrick McNulty stranded in a frozen world for good?

He breaks it, dropping the watch while wheeling a cart of cash out of a bank he froze mid-robbery. A bore nobody would listen to is left with nobody able to hear him.

In The Twilight Zone's 'The Odyssey of Flight 33', what sight below tells the crew their jet has slipped through time?

A grazing dinosaur is the first shock; a second run at the jet stream gets them only as far as 1939, where the control tower is baffled by talk of jets. The captain tries once more before the fuel runs out.

In The Twilight Zone's 'Stopover in a Quiet Town', what is the empty town where a hungover couple wake up?

A giant's model village is all it is, complete with a miniature railway, and the couple are now an alien girl's pets. The clues include glued-on cabinets and a stuffed squirrel.

In The Twilight Zone's 'The Old Man in the Cave', what do post-nuclear survivors find when the cave is opened?

A computer had been advising the town which food was safe to eat. Egged on by a swaggering army major, the survivors eat the tins it warned against, smash it and die.

In The Twilight Zone's 'Night Call', the fallen telephone line behind an old woman's eerie calls is lying where?

On her fiancé's grave, it turns out: he died in 1932 in a car she insisted on driving. When she begs the caller to keep talking, he reminds her she told him to leave her alone.

In The Twilight Zone's 'One for the Angels', what does Lou Bookman use to make Mr. Death miss a midnight appointment?

A sales spiel so dazzling that Death buys up a whole case of trinkets keeps him from a little girl's bedside at midnight. The old pedlar then goes willingly in her place.

In The Twilight Zone's 'Mirror Image', where is Millicent Barnes waiting when she first glimpses her exact double?

A bus depot in upstate New York is the setting, where staff insist she has already asked her questions and checked her bag. Rod Serling got the idea at an airport, from a stranger dressed like him with a matching suitcase.

In The Twilight Zone's 'The Hunt', what really lies behind the gate that refuses to admit a dead hunter's dog?

Hell lies behind the gate: its keeper barred the hound because Rip would have smelled the brimstone and warned his master. An angel catches up with the pair farther along the road.

Which composer, later an Oscar winner for The Omen, scored Twilight Zone episodes including 'Back There' and 'Dust'?

Jerry Goldsmith wrote several scores for the series early in his career, among them the music for 'The Big Tall Wish'. He went on to eighteen Academy Award nominations.

Which future Oscar winner plays a loner smitten with a museum dollhouse figure in The Twilight Zone's 'Miniature'?

Robert Duvall plays Charley Parkes, who ends up as a tiny figure inside the dollhouse himself. A plagiarism lawsuit, later dismissed, kept the episode out of the syndication package.

On which holiday was Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling born, into a Jewish family in Syracuse, New York?

Christmas Day 1924 was his birthday. Four decades on he scripted a television reworking of Dickens's seasonal ghost story, with Peter Sellers as a demagogue.

Rod Serling named the company that made The Twilight Zone after which Finger Lake, where his family kept a summer home?

Cayuga Productions was owned and named by Serling, a nod to his roots in central New York. He honeymooned at a house on the lake and went back almost every summer afterwards.

Which Rod Serling teleplay, later an Anthony Quinn film, helped make his name before The Twilight Zone?

Requiem for a Heavyweight won a Peabody Award, the first given to an individual television script. It went out live in 1956, and the film version followed six years later.

Which future Oscar winner hosted the 2002 revival of The Twilight Zone on UPN, appearing on screen as Rod Serling had?

Forest Whitaker introduced and narrated every story of the revival's single season. His Academy Award came a few years later, for playing the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin.

Which deep-voiced actor hosted 1994's Twilight Zone: Rod Serling's Lost Classics, built from two rediscovered stories?

James Earl Jones hosted and narrated the television film. Serling's widow, who co-produced it, reportedly found the two pieces in a trunk in the family garage.

The singer of which nu-metal band supplied the rock theme for the 2002 revival of The Twilight Zone?

Korn frontman Jonathan Davis was hired to write and record the theme, which replaced a moodier opening halfway through the revival's only season.

Which actor leads 'Nightmare at 30,000 Feet', the 2019 Twilight Zone remake where a podcast foretells a flight's fate?

Adam Scott plays a passenger who finds an MP3 player whose podcast describes his own flight vanishing. The remake drops the original's gremlin, apart from a cameo as a washed-up toy.

Which former child actor returned as the adult Anthony Fremont in the Twilight Zone sequel 'It's Still a Good Life'?

Bill Mumy came back 41 years after first playing the all-powerful boy, with his real daughter Liliana as Anthony's even stronger child. Cloris Leachman returned as the mother.

Twilight Zone writer George Clayton Johnson co-wrote which novel about a society where nobody is allowed to grow old?

Logan's Run, written with William F. Nolan, became a 1976 film. Johnson also wrote the first Star Trek episode ever broadcast and the story behind Ocean's 11.

Which future action star carries 'Shatterday', the story that opened the 1985 Twilight Zone revival, almost alone?

Bruce Willis plays Peter Jay Novins, who dials his own number from a bar and hears himself pick up. Every other significant character is only ever heard offscreen.

Which tough-guy actor plays a soldier opposite Elizabeth Montgomery in The Twilight Zone's nearly wordless 'Two'?

Charles Bronson and his co-star play the last survivors of opposing armies in a ruined town. She says a Russian word meaning beautiful, which he later echoes back to her as a peace offering.