Jake Epping, a divorced high school teacher, discovers from his dying friend a time portal to a date in 1958 at the back of his friend's diner. His friend proposes that he go back in time to stop John F. Kennedy's assassination. There, Jake lives a different life and falls in love all while preparing for the eventual date that will change history.
A television series by J. J. Abrams and Stephen King starring James Franco as Jake aired on Hulu in 2016.
This story provides examples of:
- The '50s: The rabbit hole always drops you off in 1958. Jake stays in the past long enough to eventually reach the early '60s, but the culture and society of the '50s hasn't yet gone away.
- Adaptation Explanation Extrication: In the TV series, The Guardians never explain that the timeline changes are damaging reality, and Harry only offers the briefest of explanations when Jake meets him in the Bad Future. The viewer is left with the impression that Kennedy just sucked that badly.
- Adaptational Nice Guy: In the book, Deke reminisces about Minstrel Shows, obviously indicating that he's racist. In the show, however, he and Ms. Mimi (who is African-American in the show) are romantically involved and the two keep their relationship under wraps out of well-founded fear of public backlash.
- Age Lift: Bill Turcotte is noticeably younger in the series than he is in the book, most likely to go with his larger role (see below).
- The Alcoholic:
- Jake's ex-wife struggled for years with alcohol abuse. He reflects frequently on her efforts to stay sober, the lies she would tell (to others and also to herself), and how it was one of the key components in the end of their marriage. It seems that she did eventually sober up for good, but they separated soon afterwards so he doesn't know if she has since relapsed.
- The mysterious Yellow-Card Man, a wino who accosts Al (and Jake) every time they exit the rabbit hole for money so he can buy alcohol. Jake eventually learns that it was his knowledge of the changing timelines that drove him to drink.
- The Alleged Car:
- No matter how well-maintained a car may be, when Jake attempts to alter the past any vehicle he is driving or riding in spontaneously breaks down with excessive mechanical problems that weren't there yesterday.
- Jake's Sunliner starts the book as a pristine car that he grows extremely attached to. Over the course of the novel, the wear-and-tear from five years hard driving across the country turns into a shaky, near-wreck that eventually breaks down completely.
- Allohistorical Allusion: In real life, FBI Agent James Hosty eventually believed that Oswald assassinated Kennedy at the behest of the Soviet Union, and that Soviet spies met with him him to give instructions. When Jake manages to stop the assassination, Hosty thinks that he may be a Soviet spy who was sent to stop Oswald from performing an assassination that they didn't want to happen.
- Alternate History: Jake creates a spectacularly bad future, where the Vietnam War went nuclear, George Wallace and Curtis LeMay became president, the Civil Rights Act never passed, and racial tensions are even worse. It got so bad that Maine seceded from the USA and has become a Canadian province. In addition to these "normal" results from his tampering, there are also dramatic earthquakes that will destroy the entire planet due to the ruptures in time itself.
- Alternate Timeline: Jake creates two with his forays into the past, both of which are undone when he goes back.
- In the first, all but one of the Dunning family survived thanks to Jake's intervention, but Harry was killed in Vietnam.
- In the second, Jake kills Frank Dunning at the graveyard, stops Oswald from assassinating JFK, and creates a Bad Future.
- And Then John Was a Zombie: Jake Epping is Jimla.
- Apocalypse How: Averted, but it's strongly implied that Jake's alteration to the timeline is in the process of causing a Z-3.
- Arc Words:
- "JIMLA!"
- "Life turns on a dime."
- "The past harmonizes."
- "The past is obdurate."
- "Dancing is life."
- "Little by slowly" during Sadie's recovery in the hospital, and later Jake's.
- For the television show: "You shouldn't be here."
- "I've never been what you might call a 'crying man'"
- Artistic License – History:
- One of Jake's friends tells him to stop wasting his time and bet the Bears to win the NFC in 1963. The Bears did win the title that year, but it was still the NFL. The NFL/AFL merger (which led to the creation of the NFC and AFC) would not be agreed to until 1966, and was not consummated until 1970. This was changed in at least one later edition of the book.
- The prize fight that Jake and Sadie go to was entirely fictional, as is the newspaper article about Mohrenschildt at Jack Ruby's nightclub.
- Ascended Extra: Bill Turcotte has a much larger role in the miniseries than he had in the book. In the book, he only appears during the part set in Derry. In the series he becomes Jake’s ally in his quest to save Kennedy and moves with him to Jodie, posing as Jake’s little brother.
- Axe-Crazy:
- Frank Dunning killed his wife and several kids with a hammer in a drunken rage after years of drunken abuse. Jake eventually finds out that he killed his first family as well, but covered it up so nobody ever suspected.
- Johnny, Sadie's ex-husband, had several mental disorders that are undiagnosed in the past (Jake figures he must have extreme OCD, along with other disorders, when Sadie describes them to him). Sadie herself says that she doesn't think he would actually become violent, but Jake thinks that he will eventually echo Frank Dunning. After he loses his job and is subjected to forced ECT, Johnny mutilates Sadie with a knife and plans to kill either her or Jake.
- Bad Future: The result of Kennedy being saved.
- Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Subverted. Sadie is disfigured and given a Glasgow Grin on one side of her face by her crazy ex-husband. She gets better by the end of the book but still retains a scar.
- Bittersweet Ending: Jake finds out that not only did stopping the Kennedy assassination make a world far worse, it will eventually destroy the fabric of time. Jake is able to undo this easily, but sadly he can't ever go back to meet Sadie again. Thankfully, she turns out to still be alive in modern days, albeit wounded by her crazy ex. Ultimately, the only thing he changed was that he aged the years he spent in the past. Both the book and the TV series end with Jake and an elderly Sadie sharing a dance together at the school reunion in the present.
- Bookends: Jake makes his first trip in time because Harry Dunning tells him the disturbing history of his life, and Jake realizes he can fix it. He makes his final trip because Harry Dunning tells him the disturbing history of the new world his time travel has created, and again Jake knows that he can fix it.
- Butterfly of Doom: The "butterfly effect" is explicitly mentioned (multiple times) in the novel. Ray Bradbury's A Sound of Thunder is named. It's impossible to make a completely positive change to the past. Positive changes will be accompanied by some negative effect—and a large enough change can unravel the very fabric of the universe.
- Celebrity Casualty: In the altered future, Bill Clinton dies of a heart attack at the 2004 Democratic Convention.
- Continuity Nod: The story is filled with references to other works by Stephen King.
- During his stay in Derry, which is also the setting of IT, Jake runs into Richie Tozier and Beverly Marsh, two of the "Losers Club", visits the storm drain where George was killed, and hears Pennywise calling out to him at the ruins of a local ironworks.
- Later on, he moves to Jodie, Texas, where he hears of a rival football team from nearby town of Arnette, where Stu lives at the beginning of The Stand.
- The number 19 crops in a few places. An example would be Jake's safe deposit box number being 775. This may make this book fit in with The Dark Tower series. June 19,1999, the day King was hit by a car and nearly killed, is mentioned as the day nuclear war broke out.
- One of the cars seen in the Bad Future is a Takura Spirit, also from The Dark Tower series.
- Plymouth Furies keep turning up as the past harmonizes, particularly a red-and-white one driven by Sadie's ex-husband.
- Jake fears killing Frank Dunning could result in his imprisonment in Shawshank State Prison.
- In the series, the past throws up hallucinations to confuse and disorient Jake. In the Book Depository, you can see the phrase "REDRUM" spraypainted on a wall and in the Bad Future, you can see "Captain Trips" painted in the background.
- It has a blink and you'll miss it mention of a Frati Brothers Pawn Shop in the 1958 section. Jake runs into both of them in the course of his mission: one in Derry, and the other in Fort Worth.
- Contrived Coincidence:
- Lampshaded. Situations keep repeating for Jake as the past "harmonizes."
- In the series, Sadie not only happens to be visiting Lisbon on the exact day the portal drops you off, but she is actually passing in a car at the exact moment.
- Cool Car: The portal happens to dump travelers out near a dealership with a killer Ford Sunliner for sale.
- Cool Old Lady: Mild-mannered librarian Mimi Corcoran, who secretly holds a great deal of clout in the actual running of the school—enough to get Jake hired. She also manages to figure out he's a time traveler. When she's diagnosed with cancer, she goes to Mexico with the intention of either getting the best medical care available or committing suicide while she's still able to do so.
- Crapsack World: The alternate present day created by Kennedy's survival is a very unpleasant place. The Civil Rights Act was never passed and Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated by the FBI, so race relations in the United States remain bad. The Vietnam War was ended by the United States nuking Hanoi, resulting in nuclear weapons being used frequently in warfare, so much of the world is radioactive. President Hilary Clinton is now trying to hold the remains of the country together under martial law. Gang warfare, pollution, poverty, extremism, famine, and racism are commonplace.
- Cutting the Electronic Leash: Jake threw his phone and all his post-1958 change into the pond behind the motel when he realized what they would mean if anybody discovered them. As time progresses, he relishes how much freedom he has not being bound by a cell phone.
- Cyberpunk: The horrific 2011 Jake encounters is a downplayed version. It has both devastation and futuristic electric cars.
- Deconstruction: Of romanticizing the so-called "good old days". As noted below, there is quite a lot of Deliberate Values Dissonance and aversions of Politically Correct History.
- Deliberate Values Dissonance: Jake finds himself enjoying the food and culture of the past, but makes a deliberate point to explain to the reader that just because things are nice for him doesn't mean they were nice all the way around. He repeatedly mentions the time he saw a "Colored" bathroom that was just a wooden plank over a stream, and the path to get there was overgrown with poison ivy. Even Deke, one of Jake's kind elderly friends, reminisces fondly about the Minstrel Shows they had when he was younger.
- Divided States of America: America has declined so horribly in the Bad Future that Maine secedes to join Canada.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: In the Bad Future, Kennedy runs the Vietnam War the same way Bush ran the second Iraq war, with even worse results.
- Domestic Abuser:
- Frank Dunning is the "gets drunk and violent" style of abuser, despite his charming and friendly personality when he is sober. It got so bad that his wife actually kicked him out of their home in 1958, despite the extreme social stigma of the time. Jake learns that this is a repeating pattern for him, and that he had killed his first wife and child years before.
- Lee Harvey Oswald is the type of man who beats on his wife to make himself feel better, since he is so angry at their situation in the world.
- Johnny Clayton's abuse of Sadie is more emotional and psychological, especially his putting a broom between them. At least until he comes to cut her up.
- Doorstopper: The hardback edition is 850 pages.
- Dumbass Has a Point: In the series, Bill asks a number of good questions that Jake doesn't have answers for.
- Embarrassing Middle Name: Averted when Jake tries to pull it on Sadie to put the brakes on their intimate tryst. She simply says, "Laura!" with a grin and continues undressing.
- Everything Trying to Kill You: When Jake tries to change the past, ever more significant calamities befall him. When he gets close to making a big change, the universe stops dicking around and tries to kill him repeatedly.
- Evolving Credits: After going unchanged for most of the series, the opening for the final episode changes things up. Given its rather foreboding imagery, such as the drooping red strings, the diner being on fire, and the overturned car, the missing clock on the wall, it's an early tell that something has Gone Horribly Wrong.
- In the opening to the third-to-last episode, the newspaper headline also changes from "Kennedy Killed" to "Walker Lives!" This change is reversed again in the following episode.
- Fallen States of America: The US ends up like this by 2011 as a result of Jake preventing the Kennedy assassination. It gets so bad that Maine votes to leave the US and join Canada instead.
- Flanderization: In IT, Mr. Keane is a civilized man with just a bit of a nasty edge to him, exemplified by him telling Eddie the truth about his supposed asthma but at the same time seeming to enjoy the distress this causes Eddie a little too much. In his appearance in this book, he's an all-out Jerkass. The same can be said to have happened to the city of Derry as a whole, with the subtle wrongness from IT having turned a great deal more overt.
- Foreshadowing: Jake worries aloud that saving Kennedy could eventually result in a Bad Future where America has a fascist government and the air is so bad that people have to walk around in gas masks. Guess what Jake finds when he returns to the present...
- After Jake is heading back to Maine after successfully saving Kennedy, he hears from the cab driver that a major earthquake hit Los Angeles, destroying much of the city and killing over 7,000 people. When he makes it back to 2011, it turns out it was only the first of many.
- For the Evulz: George de Mohrenschildt basically confesses that he baited Lee Harvey Oswald into shooting at Edwin Walker for fun.
- Freudian Excuse: Oswald has these.
- Gaia's Lament: A few examples in the Bad Future according to Harry, where the world has seen almost thirty atomic bombings, the Middle East has become fields of black glass that "glows in the dark," the Gulf of Mexico is ecologically dead after a dirty bomb was set off in Miami, and the Vermont Yankee nuclear planet went critical after an earthquake and spewed radiation across New England and Southern Quebec.
- Grandfather Paradox: Hand Waved. When Jake asks about it, Al just asks what kind of sicko would even want to try? As Jake goes on, it becomes evident that if possible, it would at the least be very, very difficult.
- The Greatest Story Never Told: With Al's death, his diner closes down and is likely demolished after Jake moves away from Lisbon Falls, making it unlikely anyone will ever use the portal again. After resetting the timeline back to what it was, this leaves Jake as the only person who'll ever truly know what happened.
- Historical Domain Character:
- A chunk of the book is Epping keeping a close eye on Lee Harvey Oswald and monitoring his life and relationships with friends and family.
- Deke and Mimi hire Doug Sahm and his band (thought by Jake to be the Sir Douglas Quintet, but they wouldn't be formed for another 3-4 years) for their wedding reception.
- Hitler's Time Travel Exemption Act: Extends it to every major event in history. It turns out that changing such events can and often will lead to a slow-but-certain Time Crash, other nasty side effects notwithstanding. Jake finds this out the hard way.
- I'm Mr. [Future Pop Culture Reference]: Constant in the series. When cornered about his past, Jake claims to have made two tours in Korea for the 4077th M*A*S*H; to have composed a song with three friends called John, Paul, and Ringo; or to be in witness protection after seeing a mafia leader called Michael kill his brother Fredo in a lake. He also makes a reference to the film The Manchurian Candidate before realizing that it has not come out yet, but it lands because the book has.
- I Let Gwen Stacy Die: Jake blames Sadie getting slashed in the face on his mucking around with the past. When he eventually fixes the Bad Future his saving Kennedy caused, he finds out that Sadie gets slashed anyway... because the past really does harmonize.
- Insane Equals Violent: Jake apparently believes this. He is certain that Johnny is a danger to Sadie's life, even though he just seems to suffer from some kind of obsessive-compulsive disorder that, while it certainly makes him behave like an emotionally abusive control freak and caused him to slap her in the face once, should not immediately translate into being homicidal. He turns out to be right, mind you. He also refers to Oswald as one of "the crazies," who he seems to consider violent per definition.
- Irony: While in the past, someone mentions that having Kennedy for president will lead to the end of the world, with people living in pollution and open sores on their bodies. This is exactly what happens after Jake saves Kennedy and travels back to the future to see how things have changed.
- It's All About Me: While Sadie is recovering from Johnny's attack all Sadie's mother can talk about is how they look in front of Johnny's family. Sadie appropriately throws her out.
- It's for a Book: Jake's original cover story as to why he was traveling to Dallas. Eventually, he actually starts writing a book.
- It's Okay to Cry: Deconstructed, Jake Epping is a man who doesn't cry, even when everybody around him thinks he should. It's not that he doesn't feel sadness or anger, and it's not that he's repressed, he just doesn't cry. This leads to people thinking that he is cold or emotionless when he doesn't even cry at intense personal trauma. His ex-wife described his lack of tears as one of the reasons for why she left him.
- John F. Kennedy: Saving him from death is the main plot point.
- Just Before the End: One of the consequences of Jake interfering with history is Earth being struck with almost constant earthquakes due to the disturbance of reality. It's estimated by scientists that the planet will have completely broken apart by 2080.
- Just in Time: Jake stops Oswald at the very last minute.
- Life Will Kill You: In the original timeline, Harry Dunning is the Sole Survivor of his family's massacre at the hands of his father, but was injured in the attack, leaving him walking with a severe limp. After saving most of the family on his first go-round and going to check on them in the present, Jake finds out that without his handicap Harry was eligible for conscription and died in Vietnam as a young man.
- Love at First Sight: Jake denies that it happened between him and Sadie, but he admits that there was definitely a connection right away that grew into love very quickly.
- The Mafia: Jake wins a few long shot bets from them to fund his time in the past. It burns him when he doesn't account for their interstate connections.
- Magnetic Hero: Jake finds enormous popularity as a teacher in Jodie, Texas. Even after his degree is exposed as fraudulent, he's allowed to walk away with few repercussions.
- Major Injury Underreaction: In the series, Jake hits Johnny in the head with a fire poker, driving the spike clean through his skull. Perhaps as a result of the amateur lobotomy, Johnny just stares at him blankly, looking a bit confused. Then Sadie, to everyone's immense relief, blows Johnny away with the handgun he dropped.
- Meet Cute: Jake and Sadie have a classic first meting, where Sadie trips and Jake catches her before she falls.
- Mister Sand Man Sequence: An unmistakably late 50s scene greets Jake every time he goes through the portal, scored with Maurice Williams & the Zodiacs 1960 hit "Stay."
- Mondegreen Gag: One of the characters Jake meets is called "Silent Mike", because when he was little, he misheard the song "Silent Night", thinking that it was all about him.
- More than Just a Teacher: Jake time travels to the past and works as a high school teacher there, hiding his knowledge of the future.
- Most Writers Are Writers: Jake Epping is a high school English teacher. When he goes back in time he gets a job working as a substitute teacher, and also claims to be writing a book as a cover for his visits to Dallas. He eventually starts writing the book, and is a little hurt when he is told that it's okay, but nothing really special.
- Mundane Utility: Al Templeton initially uses the time portal to get meat at a cheap price in 1958 to make a profit in the present.
- My Beloved Smother: Oswald's mother, Marguerite.
- My God, What Have I Done?: After Jake comes back after having saved Kennedy, when talking to Harry.
- Mystery Meat: Subverted. It's assumed by everyone that the reason why Al Templeton's meat is so cheap is because he's using roadkill. In reality it's because he's getting it from 1958.
- No Communities Were Harmed:
- Like in It, Derry is meant as a stand-in for Bangor, Maine.
- King never states outright exactly where Jodie, TX (or Denholm County, in which it is located) is meant to be but it is close enough to Dallas/Fort Worth, where Jake moves to in order to spy on Oswald.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Al believed preventing the Kennedy assassination would lead to a better and brighter future, and recruits Jake's help in doing just that. Instead, this causes serious damage to the fabric of time, and creates an even bleaker future.
- Nuclear Weapons Taboo: Thanks to Jake's meddling, this gets broken by George Wallace, who nukes Hanoi on August 9th 1969, exactly 24 years after Nagasaki. This later escalates into a total of 28 nukes going off by 2011, including Bombay, Karachi, the Middle east, and Miami.
- Oh, Crap!: When Jake hears cheerleaders chanting "Jim-La!".
- The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: Bill Turcotte claims that he is the only one who can kill Frank Dunning. Jake calls him out on this, pointing out that he has had years to try and kill Frank but hasn't taken any action. Jake figures that this is Time itself trying to stop him from keeping Frank from killing his family, and once he 'breaks through' Bill comes to his assistance, which simultaneously does allow him to kill Frank.
- Outside-Context Problem: Jake is this to the FBI, who can't figure out how this man has the information he says he has or why there seems to be no record of his existence prior to 1958.
- Phony Degree: Jake has a genuine degree... from 2011, and knows better than to produce it to get a job in the late 1950s/early 1960s. So he gets a second degree from a diploma mill. It only works for so long, as the school officials in Jodie take time to investigate his background. A state law requiring vaccination records for all schoolteachers ultimately undoes Jake's ruse, although he's garnered enough goodwill that he's allowed simply to leave once his contract expires rather than forfeit all pay and possibly go to jail.
- Pinball Protagonist: Jake has to observe Frank Dunning and Lee Harvey Oswald but avoid actually interacting with them at all costs due to the very real danger of altering their behavior in a way he won't be able to predict. Because of this, for the overwhelming majority of the book, Jake just follows his targets around and does almost nothing to progress the plot himself.
- Police Are Useless: Jake frequently considers how he could get the police involved, but quickly realizes that they would be of no help.
- In Derry, he realizes that there's nothing for the police to actually do, since Frank hasn't committed — or even threatened— any crime yet. Even if he manages to convince them that Frank really will kill his family and they warn him off or stake out the home on Halloween, Frank would just stay home and then get drunk another night.
- In Dallas, Jake knows that the police have been inundated with so many threats and warnings about threats against President Kennedy that they won't even bother hearing him out. He also harshly describes the Dallas Police Department as "astound[ing] the world with their incompetence" with how they bungle the aftermath of the original assassination, and so knows he can't rely on them to get it right this time.
- Politically Correct History: Averted. While traveling through the Jim Crow-era South, Jake notices that the "Colored" toilets at a gas station are a stump over a stream surrounded by poison ivy. He mentions that he thinks about it every time he starts to romanticize the past.
- Portal to the Past: At the back of a diner. Turns out that's where the owner is getting an amazing deal on meat.
- Pragmatic Hero: After failing to (completely) stop Frank Dunning on his first trip into the past, Jake mercilessly shoots Frank dead on the second trip.
- Profiling: Discussed in Al's notes of how the assassination originally went down: Bonnie Ray Williams worked at the Texas Book Depository and was one of the people that the police originally suspected of being the shooter, likely because he was black. Oswald, meanwhile, was questioned and then let go once they determined that he worked there.
- Race Lift: Ms. Mimi is African American in the series, as is Jake's ex-wife (whose race isn't identified in the book).
- Red Herring Twist: A lot is made of never taking technology from the present into the past, and when Jake realizes he accidentally brought his cell phone he throws it in a pond. You'd think this would turn out to have some sort of effect on the future, but it's never mentioned again, not even as a possible contributor to the Bad Future Jake eventually finds himself in.
- Regained Memories Sequence: In the penultimate episode of the series, Sadie tries to help Jake regain his memory, which he lost as a result of injuries from the attack in the previous episode. When the two visit Lee Harvey Oswald's apartment and talk to Oswald, memories from Jake's observations of and interactions with Oswald flash through Jake's mind, restoring his memory.
- Regional Redecoration: In the Bad Future, Harry mentions that Hokkaido and three smaller Japanese islands sank sometime in 2007 thanks to the earthquakes.
- Reset Button: Anyone who travels through the portal overwrites the actions of the previous person. Zack Lang, a.k.a. the Green Card Man, hints that there may be a lot more work involved offstage.
- Revolvers Are for Amateurs: Jake's choice of .38 revolver hints at his inexperience with firearms. Since he's learning as he goes, he chooses it due to its compactness and simplicity.
- Revolvers Are Just Better: When in Derry, Jake makes use of a .38 revolver. He becomes fond of it and purchases a second one when he moves to Dallas. Ultimately averted, as the limited effective range on the .38 results in Jake missing Oswald and Oswald having a chance to retaliate and kill Sadie.
- Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory:
- Al keeps his memories of adult Harry Dunning when Jake first goes back to save the Dunning family, even though the picture of Harry in the diner disappears with the new timeline. Al and Jake never figure out exactly what the rules are for memory, but think it may have something to do with Al being next to the rabbit hole when Jake went in.
- Al thinks that the Yellow Card Man knows something because he happens to be right next to where the rabbit hole comes out, but his mind is so damaged through alcohol abuse that it's not really clear what he knows. The Green Card Man eventually explains to Jake that he — and the Yellow Card Man — are aware of all of the changes that Jake is causing, and the strain of holding so many disparate timelines in their minds is what drives them insane.
- Russian Girl Suffers Most: Lee's Russian wife Marina certainly has it the worst.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: That's the plan at least.
- Set Wrong What Was Once Made Right: After saving JFK results in The End of the World as We Know It, Jake has to go back and let him die.
- "Shaggy Dog" Story: Jake does manage to save President Kennedy at the last moment, but when he returns to the future he learns that significant changes to the timeline will always result in a Bad Future. He has to go back and undo everything, including saving the Dunning family, and reset history back to the way it originally went.
- Shout-Out:
- Jake frequently thinks of Lee Harvey Oswald as Oswald Rabbit.
- The rogue FBI agent who kills Martin Luther King in the Bad Future is named Dwight Holly. Dwight Holly is the name of an FBI agent in James Ellroy's Underworld USA trilogy.
- Shown Their Work: King did extensive research on what life in the 1950s was like (helped by the fact that he grew up in the fifties; he would have been eleven in the year the story is set) and even interviewed historians about what life may have been like had Kennedy not been shot. The appendices even include recipes from the period.
- The Slow Path: The portal in the diner will always lead to 11:58 AM on September 9, 1958, and any trip back through the portal will reset the previous changes. As such, the only way for Jake to actually achieve his goal of saving Kennedy is to live in the past and wait for the eponymous date to arrive. This proves to have some serious consequences for him; see Time Loop Fatigue below.
- Star-Crossed Lovers: Jake and Sadie.
- Starter Villain: Jake decides to test out the time-traveling portal by trying to take down Frank Dunning, the man who knocked off the family of his school's janitor. The first time, he's unable to save one of Harry's brothers, and Harry ends up dead in Vietnam. Showing how hard actually changing the past is.
- Statuesque Stunner: Sadie stands about 6'1" and earns admiring glances from plenty of men at the party where she meets Jake.
- Take That!: Jake is thoroughly creeped out by Dallas and flees to Jodie because he can't spend another night there. He finds Dallas ugly, smelly, racist and utterly miserable. And he can sense a great evil in the city, as he did in Derry. King noted in the afterword that some thought he was too hard on Dallas, but claims that, if anything, he was not nearly hard enough on the Dallas of the early 60s. And King made clear that he doesn't think the Dallas of the 2010s is much better.
- Thanks for the Mammary: When Jake and Sadie first meet, their introduction involves her tripping, him catching her, and his hand totally unintentionally landing on her breast.
- Time Crash: Changing the past significantly, whether for good or ill, places such strain on reality that it will eventually be destroyed. When Jake returns to the Bad Future after saving Kennedy, he learns that the earth is being rocked by massive earthquakes that are predicted to destroy the world by 2080. Beyond that, there is also a wet, tearing sound in the sky that not even scientists can explain, but which he realizes is reality itself coming undone.
- Timeline-Altering MacGuffin: Al provides Jake with detailed notes on everything leading up to the Kennedy assassination, including in-depth research into Lee Harvey Oswald's life, personality, and possible conspiracy connections. Al also gives Jake some sports statistics which he can use to gain some extra cash in an emergency. Jake uses this knowledge to convince Sadie that he is telling the truth about the Kennedy assassination.
- Time Loop Fatigue: Played with. Jake can take advantage of a time portal to go back in time to approximately five years before the JFK assassination. However, every time he returns to the present only a few minutes have gone by, and if he goes back then everything resets like he was never there. So if he prevents JFK's assassination, if he goes back it resets so he'd have to stop it all over again. He goes back and lives there five years in order to prevent JFK's murder, but loses the woman he loves and preventing JFK's murder resulted in a Crapsack World. He can go back, but then he'd have to live the five years again, but he's already five years older, he's tired, he doesn't want to go through those five years in the past again, and he was already older than the woman he loved in the first place and doesn't know if she'll still be attracted to him as an even older man.
- Time Police: There are "guardians" of respective time portals. Drastic changes to the past make them, along with the time-space continuum itself, worse for the wear.
- Time Title: The date of John F. Kennedy's assassination (in the American MM/DD/YY format), which the novel is partially about.
- Time Travel: The MacGuffin behind a diner allows a modern person to go back and forth in time.
- Time Travel for Fun and Profit: Al Templeton used the portal to get meat from the same day in 1958 and make a profit selling it for cheap in the present. As a result, everyone assumes that he's using roadkill in his burgers.
- Time-Travelers Are Spies: In addition to the questions that increasingly pop up over his past, Jake worries that his proximity to figures involved in the Kennedy assassination may implicate him in the plot as well, especially if the FBI finds Al's diary. The FBI agent who questions Jake after the attempt on JFK ultimately assumes he is a spy given his murky background, and arranges for his 'escape' in exchange for staying quiet about how the FBI dropped the ball on Oswald not once but several times. Jake's mysterious disappearance and assumed identity eventually become part of the JFK conspiracy theories in the Bad Future he unwittingly created.
- Timey-Wimey Ball: How time travel works can be rather... confusing at times.
- Town with a Dark Secret: Jake feels this hanging over him all during the time he spends in Derry. On the other hand, Jodie, TX may be the first small town to ever appear in a Stephen King novel which isn't an example of this.
- Two Lines, No Waiting: In addition to stopping Kennedy's assassination, a large chunk of the novel is spent on Jake's life and various relationships while living in the '50s.
- Undead Tax Exemption: Very much defied: Jake must create a whole new identification for himself, including going to a diploma mill to be allowed to work as a teacher. Unfortunately, it doesn't work: his ruse is exposed to the school, and after he saves JFK, the FBI are flabbergasted to find his records go only as far as 1958, and conclude he's some kind of spy.
- Unexpected Virgin: Played for Drama and tragedy. Sadie was trapped in an abusive, loveless marriage with Johnny Clayton for four years; as a result, Jake is Sadie's first truly intimate partner.
- Unusual Euphemism: "Poundcake" is Jake and Sadie's euphemism for sex, a reference to the dessert Jake had bought before their first night together.
- Viewers Are Geniuses: In the TV version of the Bad Future, Harry mentions that George Wallace had become president, and Jake reacts with horror. While Wallace was a transformative political figure in the US, he did not appear and wasn't directly referenced in the series. He had been dead for nearly twenty years and off the national stage for nearly forty by the time the show was aired, so they assume a good deal of knowledge about US political history.
- Who Shot JFK?: One of the reasons why Jake just doesn't kill Lee Harvey Oswald right off the bat is because of the conspiracy theories surrounding Kennedy's assassination and the possibility that another person may have been involved. In the end, it's just Oswald working alone. In the afterword, King notes that after reading all he could on the subject, this is the situation he considers by far the most likely.
- Why Couldn't You Save Them?: After Jake's initial attempt to save Harry's family—in which he rescues all but one sibling from his father's rampage—he decides to check up on them in the present, getting in touch with Harry's sister Ellen. Not buying his excuse for calling her, she figures out that he's the "guardian angel" who saved her family and immediately demands to know where he was when Harry died in Vietnam.
- Wretched Hive: Jake takes an instant dislike to both Derry and Dallas, regarding them as depressing, violent places.
- Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds Jake becomes this briefly after seeing the Bad Future, even calling himself the Jimla, in order to save Sadie despite knowing he needs the reset to be total, saying he doesn't care what happens. Eventually the mental anguish of even causing harm by saving her forces him to reset the past completely.
- Would Hurt a Child: Frank Dunning murdered his wife and all but one of his children in a drunken rage. The story of that night is one of the few times that Jake is moved to tears, and the thought that he can change this part of history is one of the motivations for him to accept Al's offer to go back in time.
- Year Inside, Hour Outside: No matter how long you spend in the past, returning through the portal dumps you two minutes after you left.
