Frightening moments in Quantum Leap, sorted by season.
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Season 1
- "Genesis", the pilot episode, has this in the first five minutes. We first see Sam in the Accelerator Chamber, bathed in eerie blue light as he's enveloped in steam, while a loud, discordant electric guitar plays. We have no idea what's happening, but going by Al's frantic phone call, something is going very, very wrong.
Season 2
- In "Another Mother", one of the kidnappers starts advancing toward the terrified teenage boy with an incredibly creepy look on his face. It's not hard to imagine what he has in mind. It's even more chilling considering that there were a pair
of Serial Killers in 1970's Southern California that operated in this manner and who were likely the basis for these psychos.
Season 3
- A muted one in the first part of "The Leap Home": winning the basketball game saves the Girl of the Week from an unhappy marriage as she never starts dating No Nose, but she had two kids with him who won't now be born. And whatever he does, Sam can't seem to change his dad's unhealthy habits or prevent his sister's unhappy marriage.
- "The Boogeyman": Sam leaps into Joshua Rey, a horror novelist in The '60s, and, within just a few moments of arrival, a man falls to his death from a ladder, it having been moved by a goat which seems to appear and disappear throughout the episode, and Sam's the only one who can see it. As time passes, other characters get killed off in increasingly creepy ways and, to bring this up to eleven, something is writing the murders in Rey's typewriter seemingly as they occur. Then it turns out that the goat is actually Satan, who's essentially been trolling Sam throughout the episode and steadily wearing him down before taking Al's form with glowing red eyes and nearly strangling Sam in an extremely Mind Screw-ish sequence. Thankfully, Sam Beckett strangles Satan and resets the episode to the very beginning, but without the Devil causing mayhem, nobody dies this time around. And then, it turns that the allusions to horror novels from Sam's own time period has effectively inspired their own creation, because Rey's assistant is a young Stephen King.
- At first, "Piano Man" seems like a rather subdued episode: Sam leaps into a lounge pianist performing at a bar in Tularosa, New Mexico, and his ex (and former partner), Lorraine, shows up (since her fiance, Carl, wanted to make sure she had no linger feelings before they were to get married). However, things start to feel off when it's revealed that the leapee had changed his namenote ; while he and Al try to get his real name out of her, one of the bar's employees asks to borrow his car so he can take a woman home. It is only after this does Al get the leapee's real name, Joey DeNardo... and no sooner does Al start getting information...Al: (reads from the handlink) Okay, Joey DeNardo was born in... Chicago in December, 1950, a- (shocked) and he... died when-(Sam and Lorraine run out to the parking lot, Al already there; Joey's car is a flaming wreck)Lorraine: Oh... oh my god... (hugs Sam and starts crying)Al: (to Sam) That was meant for you.
- Sam and Lorraine soon find themselves on the run from a hitman gunning for Sam (literally, even; he shoots Sam in the leg soon after the car's explosion), where it turns out that Joey had actually gone into hiding three years ago after witnessing a murder. Two of his friends, Nick and Ponti, had gone and joined the mob (while he took up piano), and Joey had the misfortune of being tricked by Nick to set up Ponti, and seeing him get killed.
- And, towards the end of the episode, it turns out you already know who Nick is. He's Carl. He never intended to marry Lorraine; he was using her to find Joey and tie up loose ends. And he's only dealt with when Lorraine accidentally causes an engine block to fall and crush him.
- Sam and Lorraine soon find themselves on the run from a hitman gunning for Sam (literally, even; he shoots Sam in the leg soon after the car's explosion), where it turns out that Joey had actually gone into hiding three years ago after witnessing a murder. Two of his friends, Nick and Ponti, had gone and joined the mob (while he took up piano), and Joey had the misfortune of being tricked by Nick to set up Ponti, and seeing him get killed.
- There's the episode "Last Dance Before an Execution", where Sam leaps into a death row inmate with only days left before his execution; indeed, he actually arrives as the man is being strapped into the electric chair and is only spared because his host was already due to be granted another stay of execution. He's able to complete his mission just in time to leap out while being electrocuted in the electric chair.
- And then you have the episode "Shock Theater", where Sam leaps into a mental asylum... mere moments before one of the orderlies purposefully gives him an unauthorized electroshock treatment of 200 volts. Now, while Sam somehow manages to not die as a result, this shock does result in him forgetting who he is, and instead acts like the various people he had leapt into prior. Of note is his abrupt transition into Magic Williams in the middle of a psychiatric evaluation, whereupon he begins freaking out due to the assumption he got caught by the VC, all the while his doctor tries in vain to figure out where Sam thinks he is now.Sam: (panicking; backs up into a corner of the room) VC! VC! (begins flailing back and forth as he remembers a VC ambush) It was an ambush, sir! We were set up by the hochoy! Oh, man!
Season 4
- "Moments to Live" has Sam leaping into a TV actor who plays a doctor. He gets kidnapped by an insane dysfunctional couple with the wife (who had won a soap detergent contest to have lunch with him, and had entered the contest numerous times) turning out to be a rabid fan that can't tell the difference between TV and real life. Sam was held prisoner against his will in an isolated house in a setting no different than Misery, and as it quickly turns out, he was kidnapped so that he can impregnate her.
- The kidnapping itself is very unsettling: at first, it just appears to be a lunch with a Loony Fan (Norma Jean Pilcher), with Sam just frustrated that he's in this leap at all (since he's facing the prospect of having to act for an episode on Monday). As they get ready to leave, Norma realizes she forget her purse, and heads back inside the restaurant. Meanwhile, Al shows up to inform Sam that he won't have to worry about acting on Monday... as, in the original history, the guy he leapt into never showed up to work. And then, as Norma returns:Norma: (runs up to Sam and Al) Sorry to keep ya waitin'!Sam: Oh. Yeah-Norma: Ready to go?Sam: Yeah, I just gotta have them bring the car around-
- Meanwhile, Al is completely unable to do anything but watch as Sam is forced into a van, furiously pounding away at the handlink as he screams at Gooshie to let him out of the Imaging Chamber in order to get more info from Ziggy.
- In a minor bit of horror, there's an elderly woman residing at Norma's house, who states is her mom. In reality, she was a fellow inmate of the asylum Norma had escaped from.
- When Norma attempts to hand Sam (who is currently handcuffed to a bed) a tray of tea, Sam mutters to himself that this whole situation is crazy. Norma proceeds to throw the tray against a wall, screaming at Sam to never say that word again, before calmly leaving to "get everything all ready for tonight". Al's response when he pops in?
- Towards the end of the episode, Sam gets her husband, Hank, to help break Norma out of her delusions by staging a scene where it appears Hank had collapsed from a ruptured ventricle. While Sam, pretending to be the doctor character, insists he can operate on Hank, Norma abruptly screams that he can't, finally admitting he isn't a real doctor. Problem solved, right? Well, no sooner does she have this revelation that she proceeds to run out of the house, and towards a nearby bridge.
- The kidnapping itself is very unsettling: at first, it just appears to be a lunch with a Loony Fan (Norma Jean Pilcher), with Sam just frustrated that he's in this leap at all (since he's facing the prospect of having to act for an episode on Monday). As they get ready to leave, Norma realizes she forget her purse, and heads back inside the restaurant. Meanwhile, Al shows up to inform Sam that he won't have to worry about acting on Monday... as, in the original history, the guy he leapt into never showed up to work. And then, as Norma returns:
- One particular episode, "The Curse of Ptah-Hotep", revolves around a villain faking a mummy's curse to steal its treasures, revealing how he did it all in the end. Then said mummy stands up and strangles him while the survivors flee in terror. Sam leaps out before we find out how it ends. Al confirms everyonenote survived, but mysteriously could never find the ruin again after a sandstorm buried it.
- It's even scarier because a wall separates them from Razul and the mummy. You don't see it happen; you only hear the screams. Al is able to pass through the wall to check it out, but immediately comes running back out, saying, "He's killing him."
- A particularly chilling example occurs in "A Leap for Lisa": Sam has lept into Al during his time in the Navy, and after Al's old girlfriend, Lisa, has died in a car accident. Due to circumstances during the leap, Al's commanding officer, Ryker, accuses him of raping and murdering his wife; as Al finds out via the handlink, this results in him being declared guilty and dying in the gas chamber. The horror aspect kicks in when Al's handlink suddenly begins rapidly increasing the probability of Al's death, with him nervously reading out Ziggy's estimates as it reaches 100%... only for a man by the name of Edward St. John V to appear in Al's place, commenting how Alpha is 100% certain of Al's impending death. Sam knows there's something wrong with this situation, wondering who the stranger holding the handlink is, only to then begin rapidly forgetting the prior timeline. It's only when Sam manages to discover a cigar in Al's car that the timeline reasserts itself, with Al unaware that something had gone wrong.
Season 5
- "Lee Harvey Oswald" sees Sam leaping into the eponymous assassin. As frightening as becoming the infamous assassin is on its own, it gets worse when Sam begins to behave like Oswald did due to psycho-synergy, and this leads to him abusing his wife. Both Sam and Al are horrified by his personality changes and Sam starts feeling like he's losing his mind.
- The Evil Leapers, who jump into your body or the bodies of people around you to ruin your life. And we don't even know why.
- It is particularly disturbing seeing how fixated Leta Aider was in seeing Abigail Fuller get punished for supposedly killing her daughter and husband all throughout "Trilogy": from attempting to kill her with a house fire in Part 1, to trying to form a lynch mob in Part 2, to even going so far as to paint her own suicide as a murder in Part 3. It's also worth mentioning that these events span a period of 23 years, from 1955 to 1978. And what's worse, when this whole ordeal started, Abigail was only ten.
- On the topic of Part 1's house fire, it's worth mentioning that Sam was literally seconds away from being killed by the ceiling collapsing before he leaped; Part 2 confirms that Sheriff Fuller, the leapee (and Abigail's father) died right after.
