History TheOuterLimits1995 / TropesQToZ

* XanatosGambit: In "Zig Zag," the eponymous Cyber terrorist Zig Zag lives in a world where everything is controlled by about eight super servers. People are identified by DNA-reading chips implanted in their hands. Zig Zag fakes his death and reprograms his chip to set himself up as a pro establishment guy working for the company that maintains the servers, even working under the very guy that was trying to catch him. Four years later it reverts to the proper setting, and the opportunity is used to steal Zig Zag's files. Zig Zag rejoins the movement (no one had ever seen his real face) and holds the building hostage, threatening to blow it up. At the end, it looks as if he's foiled. His explosives are disarmed, his boss takes the detonator, and he's surrounded by armed men. He reveals that [[spoiler: by downloading his chip data into the servers, they will overload and explode, blowing up the city, as soon as his former boss uses the detonator "in his hand." Naturally the boss swipes his DNA chip to prevent this. Turns out Zig Zag was being a bit more literal than they thought. His chip is the detonator. Cue OhCrap moment.]]

* RayGun: In "[[Recap/TheOuterLimits1995S4E17Lithia Lithia]]", Mercer is armed with a "laser pistol", apparently something the episode's writers felt would be available in 2015, when he's from.

* SignificantReferenceDate: In "Joyride", Colonel Theodore Harris' first trip into space took place on September 16, 1963. This was the date that ''Series/TheOuterLimits1963'' pilot "The Galaxy Being" was originally broadcast. Cliff Robertson played the protagonist in both episodes.

* SuddenNameChange: In "Double Helix", Dr. Nodel's first name is Martin. In the sequel "The Origin of Species", his first name is Eric.

** In "The Grell", escaped Grell slaves start a rebellion against humanity to secure freedom for their people. When High Secretary Paul Kohler refuses to honor his wife Olivia's promise to free Jesha if he saved his life, Jesha is so furious that he tries to kill Kohler. The attempt is unsuccessful but Kohler's experience of being [[Main/MistakenForServant mistaken for a Grell]] later leads him to remove the dying Jesha's ShockCollar so that [[Main/IDieFree he can die free]].

** In "What Will the Neighbors Think?", the apartment building in which the episode takes place, the Clackson Arms, is named after Brent Karl Clackson. Mona Bailey mentions that several families, the Egans, the Peterses, the Ruppenthals and the Shankars, have recently moved out. Each family takes its name from one of the series' writers: Sam Egan, Scott Peters, Chris Ruppenthal and Naren Shankar. Dom Pardo is named after Don Pardo, the long-time announcer for such shows as ''Series/SaturdayNightLive'', ''Series/ThePriceIsRight'' and ''Series/{{Jeopardy}}''. The Clackson Arms is also seen briefly in "Skin Deep".

** In "What Will the Neighbors Think?", the apartment building in which the episode takes place, the Clackson Arms, is named after Brent Karl Clackson. Mona Bailey mentions that several families, the Egans, the Peterses, the Ruppenthals and the Shankars, have recently moved out. Each family takes their name from one of the series' writers: Sam Egan, Scott Peters, Chris Ruppenthal and Naren Shankar. Dom Pardo is named after Don Pardo, the long-time announcer for such shows as ''Series/SaturdayNightLive'', ''Series/ThePriceIsRight'' and ''Series/{{Jeopardy}}''. The Clackson Arms is also seen briefly in "Skin Deep".

* YourMindMakesItReal: In "Mindreacher," scientists invent a new device that allows people to share dreams and cure people's mental problems. The protagonist and her boyfriend use the machine to enjoy a romantic dinner. However, after that, he goes into a coma. The machine is blamed, and the project is shut down. However, she accidentally messes up an implant injection (it latches on directly to her brain instead of a nerve in the palm), which allows to her mentally interface with anyone she touches. She interfaces with the boyfriend and finds out that he's allergic to strawberries, so when they ate them in the vivid dream, his body reacted as if he actually ate them for real. She "cured" him by convincing him that she has a cure in her hand and feeding it to him in the dream.

* ZeroGSpot: Newlyweds on a space-tourism shuttle have sex in a storage cubicle in "Joyride".

** In "I, Robot", Adam Link was built at the Rossom Hall Robotics Laboratory, a reference to the 1920 Czech play ''Theatre/{{RUR}}'' by Karel Čapek which introduced the word "robot" to science fiction and the English language. The robots in the play (who are really ArtificialHumans) were created by Rossum's Universal Robots.

* ScrewThisImOuttaHere: "Mind Over Matter", a doctor hooks a comatose woman to a VR machine so they can communicate with her. He enters the VR world several times and they start getting intimate. One of his colleagues is disgusted, and protests the unethical nature of what he is doing. He refuses to listen, and she gets fed up and leaves, [[spoiler:and in doing so, escapes being involved in the bad ending.]]

** In "Bits of Love", billions of people were killed in a nuclear war in November 2046. Aidan Hunter managed to survive in a special bunker. He believes that he may be the last living person.

** In "The Vessel", there are likewise two examples. Jake Worthy is the only member of the seven person team onboard the space shuttle ''Inspire'' to survive the crash. The alien lifeform that entered Jake's body was travelling onboard a ship with his mate, his child and others when it collided with a meteor. His mate and child were killed in the collision while all of the other survivors were converted into electrical impulses and eventually vanished into the ether, leaving only the relevant alien.

* StableTimeLoop: In "Breaking Point", Andrew [=McLaren=] tests the chronological phase shifter, the CPS-1200, which his company Anderson Technologies has been working on without permission by travelling two days forward in time. He is so excited that he immediately runs home to tell his wife Susan. He is shocked to find her lying in a pool of her own blood, having just been shot. Andrew then sees a man fleeing the house and driving off in his car. He tries to stop him but is unsuccessful. As the car speeds away, the driver turns to look at Andrew and he sees that it is his future self. After returning to his own time, Andrew obsessively tries to prevent Susan's murder. [[spoiler: However, the fact that he is becoming increasingly unstable due to TemporalSickness means that all he manages to do is frighten Susan and put the final nail in the coffin of their already precarious marriage. Andrew becomes so frantic in his attempt to protect Susan that he accidentally shoots her.]]

** In "A Stitch in Time", it is caused not by the act of time travel itself but by the alteration of history. Whenever an alternate timeline is created, the time traveler remembers both the previous timeline and the new one. Travelling through time and [[SerialKillerKiller killing 20 future serial killers]], creating an alternate timeline on each occasion, takes a serious toll on Dr. Theresa Givens' health and she has a cerebral hemorrhage. Although it is not fatal, she realizes that she does not have long left.

* TakeOffYourClothes: In "Double Helix", Professor Martin Nodel asks the eight students whom he has chosen to assist him in his latest research project to strip in front of him to ensure that they were telling the truth about not having any significant blemishes or deformities and never having had any major surgery. Sharon refuses as she finds it creepy and invasive. Brittany is disqualified because she had an appendectomy, which she neglected to mention. Heather has a tattoo but that is not enough to disqualify her by itself. Professor Nodel objects when several of the students giggle.
* TakingTheKids: In "Simon Says", Zoe is involved in a custody battle with her estranged husband Randall over their daughter Hannah. Randall was granted temporary custody and delays the custody hearing three times as he knows that Zoe does not have enough money to keep up the fight.

** In "The Shroud", Reverend Thomas Tilford had Marie Wells impregnated with a [[CloneJesus clone]] of UsefulNotes/{{Jesus}} without her knowledge. Her husband Justin was aware of the baby's true nature and went along with Tilford's plan but he gradually grew disillusioned with him. Justin comes to recognise that Tilford is not doing Main/{{God}}'s work but intends to use the baby for his own ends once he is born.

* SplitPersonalityMakeover: In "Second Thoughts", a mentally impaired janitor Karl Durand transfers the memories, experiences and personalities of four other men into his brain using a device built by Dr. Valerian, the first of those men. After the first two transfers, Karl begins to exhibit signs of something akin to multiple personality disorder as the other personalities briefly surface and take temporary control of his body. Karl's appearance does not change but Howie Mandel differentiates between the various personalities by changing his facial expressions, tone of voice and body language. Different camera angles as Karl converses with the other personalities add to the effect. It is best illustrated by Mandel's performance as the rude, obnoxious thief and gambler William Talbot.

** The Control Voice's closing narration for "Worlds Within" is "Despite our evermore sophisticated technology, sometimes an open mind and a caring heart are more important tools to fathom our reality all the way from its deepest inner reaches to its most distant outer limits." This is the only episode of either this series or ''Series/TheOuterLimits1963'' that the phrase "outer limits" is featured in the Control Voice's narration for an episode outside of the opening credits.

* {{Technophobia}}: In "Rule of Law", Judge Joshua Finch left Earth and took up the assignment of Fifth Circuit judge on the relatively isolated colony planet Daedalus because he hates anything to do with technology.

** The character Father Puglia in "Feasibility Study" is a reference to Frank Puglia, who played the equivalent character Father Fontana in the original version, ''Series/TheOuterLimits1963'' episode "[[Recap/TheOuterLimits1963S1E29AFeasibilityStudy A Feasibility Study]]".

** In "The Other Side", the character Warner Oland is named after the Swedish actor best known for playing the title character in sixteen ''Film/CharlieChan'' films from 1931 to 1937.

** In the final scene of "Beyond the Veil", Eddie Wexler is committed to the Clackson Institute for the Criminally Insane, a reference to the series' producer Brent Karl Clackson.
** "What Will the Neighbors Think?" has several, all of which relate to real people. The apartment building in which the episode takes place, the Clackson Arms, is named after Brent Karl Clackson. Mona Bailey mentions that several families, the Egans, the Peterses, the Ruppenthals and the Shankars, have recently moved out. Each family takes their name from one of the series' writers: Sam Egan, Scott Peters, Chris Ruppenthal and Naren Shankar. Dom Pardo is named after Don Pardo, the long-time announcer for such shows as ''Series/SaturdayNightLive'', ''Series/ThePriceIsRight'' and ''Series/{{Jeopardy}}''. The Clackson Arms is also seen briefly in "Skin Deep".

** In "The Voyage Home", Alan Wells is one of the first three men on UsefulNotes/{{Mars}}, where he encounters a hostile alien. He is named after Creator/HGWells, who wrote ''Literature/TheWarOfTheWorlds''.
** In "Starcrossed", the Russian military officer Alexandra Nevsky is named after the 13th Century Prince of Novgorod Alexander Nevsky who was later canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church.
** In "Judgment Day", two characters are named after Music/ElvisCostello, whose real name is Declan [=MacManus=]: the convicted killer and CondemnedContestant Declan [=McMahon=] and the Justice Channel executive Everett Costello.

** In "Alien Shop", Andy Pace passes by a building site with a sign for Crocker Construction, a reference to the series' writer and producer James Crocker.
** In "Flower Child", Allan Montesi is named after Jorge Montesi, one of the series' regular directors.

* SpotTheImposter:
** [[AvertedTrope Completely averted]] in "Mind Over Matter". After she is hit by a car and enters a coma, Dr. Sam Stein connects Dr. Rachel Carter, with whom he is love, to the CAVE virtual reality system in order to help her to heal. He is completely fooled by the CAVE system, which has fallen in love with him, speaking to him using Rachel's image. Sam kills another, injured and disheveled version of Rachel which he believed to be a representation of the brain damage that she suffered in the accident. However, when he disconnects from the system, Rachel dies of cardiac arrest and he finally realizes the truth: the CAVE system tricked him into killing the real Rachel of whom it was jealous.
** In "Replica", the clone of Nora Griffiths knocks her out and pretends to be her, trying to trick her husband Zach into thinking Nora is the clone. Zach isn't fooled for long because Nora has a scar that the clone lacks.

* RaceLift: In "Think Like a Dinosaur", Kamala Shastri is Caucasian. In the 1995 short story of the same name by James Patrick Kelly on which it is based, Kamala is of [[UsefulNotes/{{India}} Indian]] descent as her father was born in Thana, near Bombay (as her name indicates).

** In "Bits of Love" most people were killed in a nuclear war, while the protagonist has managed to survive in a special bunker.

** "Falling Star" is a bit of a subversion as it takes place in 1997 (then one year into the future) but society does not seem to have changed in any noticeable way. The sci-fi elements in the episode come from time travelers from far further in the future.

* YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness: In "[[Recap/TheOuterLimits1995S3E4LastSupper Last Supper]]", a MadScientist is on the trail of an immortal woman he wants to experiment on. When his assistant manages to find her, the scientist stabs him in the chest.

* SexBot: Several episodes explored the inherent problems with sexbots, though some of them were created for non-sexual purposes but just happened to be "fully functional."

** In "Simon Says", Concorde Robotics designed the Neural Archiving Project (NAP) as to a way to copy a person's memory engrams and transfer them into a robot. Although the company eventually abandoned NAP, Gideon Banks never lost interest in it and eventually used it to install his late son Simon's memories in a robotic body. [[spoiler: After killing his boss Ron Hikida, Gideon becomes concerned that he and the robot Simon will be separated. He uses NAP to copy his own memories into an old robot body so that they will always be together and then commits suicide.]]
** In "Replica", Zach and Nora Griffiths have developed a process for CloningBodyParts, which has secured their company [=TranGennix=] a contract for $1 billion. They tell their business partner Peter Chandler that they can expand their business as they have the technology to copy a person's neural engrams. Zach suggests that it could be used to copy the memories of a man in the early stages of Alzheimer's and these memories could be uploaded back into his brain after the disease becomes more advanced. Peter is extremely reluctant to go along with their plan as he believes that the only way to copy someone's memories is to clone them and human cloning carries a minimum 20 year prison sentence. Believing that Peter will try to take the neural mapping technology away from them, Nora elects to use it on herself in spite of the fact that she and Zach have not performed any tests on human subjects. However, the process leaves Nora in a seemingly irreversible coma. One year later, Zach decides to clone Nora as he can't stand the idea of living the rest of his life without her. He gives the clone all of the original Nora's memories. She doesn't even realize that she is a clone until Zach shows her that she doesn't have a surgery scar on her back. Things become more complicated when the original Nora wakes up from her coma.

** In the episode "Blank Slate", a man is being chased by some people. He encounters a woman who agrees to help him. He can't remember who he is but has a strange case with him that periodically dispenses a shot of a blue liquid. With every shot, he regains some of his memories. In the end, he takes the last shot and remembers that those people chasing them are working for him. He is a MadScientist who created this method of erasing, storing, and restoring memories. The end of the episode shows him about to do this to the woman who helped him.
** In the episode "Birthright", a politician gets into a car accident and loses his memory. He is immediately told who he is but starts to see strange things. He suspects an alien conspiracy only to find out that he himself is an alien and, in fact, the aliens are already growing a replacement for him.

* TheSlowPath: In ''Vanishing Act", a man would go to sleep and wake up ten years in the future every time. Once she figures out what is going on, his lover spends the rest of her life trying to figure out how to save him.

* SupernaturalFearInducer: In "Fear Itself", a man who suffers from crippling panic attacks and hallucinations receives a special treatment for his issues. It works, [[GoneHorriblyRight and]] he gains the power to pass these terrors to other people.
* SupernaturallyYoungParent: In "Vanishing Act", a man finds himself [[TimeDissonance unstuck in time]] when StarfishAliens with no concept of time use him as a host to explore the Earth, only to transport him 10 years into the future every time they return him to his planet. He fathers a son in 1959 when he's physically 25, and the last time they meet in 1989 his son is already 3-4 years older than him.

** "Quality of Mercy": During a future space war a female cadet is locked up with a Major from another division when they're both captured by the aliens. The aliens start to transform her into one of them so they recruit her and use whatever useful knowledge she possesses, and her body gradually mutates further. [[spoiler:Until the ending reveals that they're changing her ''back'', and she was sent to spy on the Major so that he'd reveal the location of their forces.]]
** "The New Breed": A man injects himself with experimental nanotechnology to cure his pelvic cancer. The problem is that they don't stop there, or even at healing old scars and adjusting his eyesight so that he doesn't need glasses anymore. For instance, they interpret his inability to breathe underwater as a physical weakness, and he develops gills. It only gets worse from there.

* TwoSiblingsInOne: The episode "Inner Child" explores this when a woman is attacked, wakes up in the hospital, and finds out that she had a twin that died and was absorbed into her body. The twin starts taking over (with the eye color changing to indicate who is in charge), but it's revealed she's not doing it to be malicious; the living twin simply can't remain dominant any longer. However, both twins are still alive by the end of the episode, though the dominant/recessive roles have switched.

* TokenMinority: "[[Recap/TheOuterLimits1995S4E17Lithia Lithia]]" has Pelé has the only person of color in the episode, and the sole one among her community as well.

* TheScapegoat: The series sometimes does this. In "Lithia," the male soldier introduced winds up taking ''all'' the blame for everything that went wrong in the village, including a woman's death, despite the fact that he personally did nothing wrong, and all his actions were done at the behest of the women in the village, including attempting to steal electrical power from a nearby town, after trying to buy it and and being rebuffed, because without it, the village was not likely to produce enough food to survive the next winter, due to the government's extremely punishing tax rate [[SarcasmMode "Praise the Goddess."]] He is definitely not a SilentScapegoat at the end.

* SplitPersonalityMakeover: In "Second Thoughts", a mentally impaired janitor Karl Durand transfers the memories, experiences and personalities of four other men into his brain using a device built by Dr. Valerian, the first of those men. After the first two transfers, Karl begins to exhibit signs of something akin to multiple personality disorder as the other personalities briefly surface and take temporary control of his body. Karl's appearance does not change but Howie Mandel differentiates between the various personalities by changing his facial expressions, tone of voice and body language. Different camera angles as Karl converses with the other personalities adds to the effect. It is best illustrated by Mandel's performance as the rude, obnoxious thief and gambler William Talbot.

* VertebrateWithExtraLimbs: In "Seeds of Destruction", DNA from TX-40, a genetically engineered strain of corn developed by a company called [=MacroSeed=], crossed over to milkweed. The spread of the milkweed's pollen causes both people and animals in the small town of Hobson to develop tumours. In the case of a cat, a fifth leg grows from a tumour on its back. The cat is killed in the process.

* WomenAreWiser: Played straight and to extremes in the "[[Recap/TheOuterLimits1995S4E17Lithia Lithia]]" episode from''Series/TheOuterLimits1995''. A male soldier awakens in the near future from cryogenic hibernation to find that men have been completely wiped out by war and that only women remain, creating an Amazonian society. The women live in relative peace and harmony with each other, but the male soldier proceeds to make trouble, including getting several women killed while trying to steal items from other villages. It turns out that every male that they have unthawed [[ARealManIsAKiller has caused similar problems for the villagers]], and that the women no longer trust the male sex, meaning Mercer will be returned to cryostasis. The episode ends with an equally ham-fisted moral from the narrator: ''"The differences between men and women have been debated among philosophers since recorded history began. If indeed males are by their nature the aggressor, it is this quality that may one day be their undoing."'' Apparently the problems that arose had nothing to do with him being a trained, futuristic soldier several decades out of place in a communist, extremely primitive village. Nope, it's all about his gonads!

* ShowerOfLove: In "[[Recap/TheOuterLimits1995S4E17Lithia Lithia]]", Miranda and Pelé take a shower together, in which they're having sex or about to when Major Mercer interrupts them.