History Literature / TheLangoliers

* HopeSpot: Inverted. [[spoiler:After they return through the rip, the world is still deserted, but once they land in Los Angeles, the vibrancy and fidelity of their surroundings informs them that they have traveled into the future and thus are now waiting for the present to catch up to them as opposed to it leaving them behind.]]

->"SHOOTING STARS ONLY."

[[caption-width-right:250: ''”Denver Center, this is American Pride Flight 29, do you read me? Over...” '']]

->“SHOOTING STARS ONLY.”

Adapted into a two-part 1995 MiniSeries on Creator/{{ABC}}, directed by Tom Holland (the one of ''Film/{{Fright Night|1985}}'' and ''Film/ChildsPlay'' fame, not [[Creator/TomHolland the one of MCU Spider-Man fame]]) and starring Kate Maberly, Kimber Riddle, Patricia Wettig, Mark Lindsay Chapman, Creator/FrankieFaison, Baxter Harris, Creator/DeanStockwell, David Morse, Christopher Collet, and Creator/BronsonPinchot.

* TheAtoner: Nick strives to be a better person than he has been and even uses the phrase “stone”. He eventually [[spoiler:volunteers for a task that means certain death to atone for accidentally killing children]].

%% Zero-context entries are not allowed on wiki pages. All such entries have been commented out (the %% markup).

[[caption-width-right:250: ''”Denver Center, this is American Pride Flight 29, Do you read me? Over...” '']]

[[caption-width-right:250:”Denver Center, this is American Pride Flight 29, Do you read me? Over...”]]

Adapted into a two-part 1995 MiniSeries on Creator/{{ABC}}, directed by Tom Holland (the one of ''Film/{{Fright Night|1985}}'' and ''Film/ChildsPlay'' fame, not [[Creator/TomHolland the one of MCU Spider-Man fame]]) and starring Kate Maberly, Kimber Riddle, Patricia Wettig, Mark Lindsay Chapman, Frankie Faison, Baxter Harris, Creator/DeanStockwell, David Morse, Christopher Collet, and Bronson Pinchot.

* PosthumousCharacter: Probably Dinah’s Aunt, who is among those who are gone when Dinah and the others wake up and never appeared in person before that. Averted in the movie where she gets a few seconds of screen time and one line of dialogue, talking to Dinah before takeoff.

* AntiHero: Nick is firmly of the PragmaticHero bent, being an overall affable chap capable of intense brutality when it means getting the job done. It's suiting of a soldier turned government hitman.
* AntiVillain: Again, Craig Toomy, of the Woobie Villain mold. Despite being a Type A {{Jerkass}}, he doesn't want to hurt anyone, not really, but extreme pressure coupled with obviously severe mental illness eventually cause him to violently snap and lose his mind entirely.

%%Zero-context entries are not allowed on wiki pages. Please add context before removing comments.

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/langoliers.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:350:Do not taunt {{Happy Fun|Ball}} TimeyWimeyBall.]]

* CreatorCameo: Stephen King briefly appears as an executive in Toomy's imaginary Boston meeting.

* TheAtoner: Nick. He eventually [[spoiler:volunteers for a task that means certain death to atone for accidentally killing children]].

* ContrivedCoincidence: A pilot being among the group; if these guys didn't have a pilot it would have been a real short story.

%%* TragicVillain: Toomy, oh so very much.
%%* WaifProphet: Dinah

* PayEvilUntoEvil: Nick briefly considers outright killing Craig Toomy in cold blood as the man lies on the floor, already dying of a crushed skull. After the damage Craig has inflicted on everyone by that point, it's not entirely unreasonable.

* BiggerBad: Arguably Roger Toomy, being directly responsible for Craig's insanity and implied to be perhaps the first person ever to know of the Langoliers' existence. This is made more prominent in the miniseries, where he seems to have some measure of control over them.

* EurekaMoment: As the plane prepares to return through a time rift, Bob can't shake the feeling something is wrong. He mulls over it, thinking of his past works, including a book with the word "sleeping" in the title and how it got good reviews and...then it hits him how the one thing every one of the passengers left behind had was that they were ''all asleep'' when the plane hit the rift the first time.

%%* EurekaMoment

* NeverTrustATitle: The name of the story implies that the monsters which appear in the story are themselves Langoliers, whereas in fact they just have some parallels with the made-up boogeymen of Craig Toomy's childhood and neither their appearance nor their purpose matches.

* SanitySlippage: Discovering you've lost everything, when you've been made [[FreudianExcuse obsessed with success]], and are going to Boston to explain this to your superiors, only to wind up trapped in a past being eaten by monsters, does this to a person.