It's November 6, 1983 in Hawkins, a small Indiana town.
In the Hawkins National Laboratory, run by the Department of Energy, a scientist is attacked by an unseen creature. Elsewhere, 12-year-old Will Byers is playing a round of Dungeons & Dragons with his friends Mike Wheeler, Lucas Sinclair, and Dustin Henderson. When he bicycles home after the game, he encounters the creature from the laboratory and disappears.
The next day, Will's mother Joyce and his older brother Jonathan notice his absence. Joyce contacts the local chief of police, Jim Hopper, who tries to assure her that nothing exciting ever happens in Hawkins, and that Will is probably with his father. But at Joyce's insistence, Hopper and deputies do a search near the local woods and find Will's abandoned bike, causing Hopper to suspect that foul play might actually be involved.
Meanwhile, Mike's older sister Nancy is in an increasingly serious relationship with local high school heartthrob, Steve Harrington, despite the misgivings of her best friend, Barbara Holland, who thinks Steve is only trying to get into Nancy's pants. Her attempts to meet up with Steve in secret is hindered by Will's disappearance, as her and Mike's mother, Karen, refuses to let her go outside unsupervised as long as Will is still missing.
Elsewhere, a buzz-cut young girl wearing a hospital gown steals food from a local diner. The owner, Benny, takes pity on her and feeds her before calling social services. From a tattoo on her arm, he learns that her name is Eleven. A woman posing as a social worker arrives and murders Benny. Armed men search the diner for Eleven, but she escapes.
That evening, Joyce believes she hears Will's voice on a distorted phone call, but her phone short circuits. Meanwhile, Mike, Dustin, and Lucas decide to undertake a search for Will of their own. As they explore the woods, they stumble upon Eleven.
This episode provides examples of:
- Boom, Headshot!: This is the fate of Benny, the diner owner, delivered by Connie.
- Brief Accent Imitation: One of the bullies imitates Dustin's speech impairment to mock him.
- Death by Looking Up: The scientist in the prologue looks up in the elevator before getting Vertically Kidnapped.
- Deer in the Headlights: Will is stunned by the sight of the Demogorgon in front of him, unable to pull the trigger of his rifle. Not that it mattered anyway.
- Donut Mess with a Cop: Hopper is seen munching a donut at the police office.
- Door Handle Scare: The closeup shot on the Byers' front door as the Demogorgon disengages the door latch from the outside.
- Double Standard: Benny roughly grabs and threatens Eleven when he sees "him" stealing food, but his entire demeanor changes when he realizes that she's female. He even gives her free food.
- However, it's possible that he changes his demeanor because he got a better look at her state (covered in dirt, scared, and wearing a hospital gown), and realized what he thought was just a thief is actually someone in distress.
- Dramatic Chase Opening: The prologue, in which a scientist is desperately running through the empty hallways, trying to escape from something. When he gets inside the elevator, we hear a sound from above him, and then an unseen being pulls him up...
- Enemy Rising Behind: The Demogorgon rises behind Will in the barn. Then Will turns around and freezes like a Deer in the Headlights.
- Enter Stage Window: Steve enters and leaves Nancy's room via the window.
- Establishing Character Moment: We're first introduced to Hopper as a rather disheveled, barely functioning substance abuser who very clearly has little interest in policing the quiet little community of Hawkins, and who is pretty much just going through the motions of investigating Will's disappearance... until he comes across Will's abandoned bike and begins to realize that something bad may indeed have happened to him. At which point, he both begins to take the matter a lot more seriously and the audience starts to see the dogged, methodical investigator that he really can be.
- Evil-Detecting Dog: The Byers dog barks whenever it smells the Demogorgon. This draws Hopper's attention to the tool shed.
- Feet-First Introduction: The first we see of Eleven is her bare feet walking across the forest floor.
- Foreshadowing:
- In a sense, the scene where Will is taken is foreshadowed twice immediately before it happens, first by the DOE scientist being taken, then by the events of the D&D game.
- In the flashback at Fort Byers, Joyce reveals that she has bought tickets to a screening of Poltergeist for her and Will. This proves to be quite an appropriate choice, given where her plot line goes.
- Free-Range Children: Lucas, Dustin, and Will all bike home alone at night.
- Gory Discretion Shot: Benny's shooting happens just off-screen.
- He Knows Too Much: Benny tries to help the girl, and it gets him killed for becoming a loose end.
- Insistent Terminology: Dustin repeatedly clarifying that Mirkwood is in The Hobbit, not The Lord of the Rings, in a police interview about his missing friend.
- Killed Mid-Sentence: Benny.
- Lady Looks Like a Dude: Given her pre-pubescent age, shaved head, and a generic hospital gown, both Bennie and his patrons initially mistake Eleven for a boy.
- Monster Munch: The lab worker in the opening scene is falling prey to whatever lurked inside the elevator.
- Newscaster Cameo: The anchorwoman is a real anchor for 11 Alive, the local NBC affiliate in Atlanta, where the show is filmed.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Poor Benny the diner owner tries to help out a lost girl and ends up shot in the head by a supposed social worker for his trouble.
- No, You: Nancy looking at her brother's breakfast.Nancy: That's disgusting.
Mike: You're disgusting! - "Pan from the Sky" Beginning: The opening scene starts with a shot of the night sky panning down to Hawkins Lab.
- Rewatch Bonus: A certain ominous sound plays after Will falls off his bike. If you've seen season four, you will melt in horror when you hear it again.
- Serious Business: Discussed In-Universe. Hopper notes how overly important the boys treat their bicycles when he discovers Will's abandoned bike:Hopper: Bike like this is like a Cadillac to these kids.
- Silent Snarker: Michael's eye roll when he finds Steve failing to climb to Nancy's window is priceless.
- Skewed Priorities:
- When reporting Will's disappearance to Hopper, Joyce brings up the fact that other kids (and his father) accuse him of being gay as a way of bullying him:Hopper: [Curious] Is he?
Joyce: He's missing is what he is, Hopper. - Dustin keeps pedantically noting that Mirkwood is from The Hobbit, not The Lord of the Rings, when Hopper is questioning the boys about the missing Will.
- When reporting Will's disappearance to Hopper, Joyce brings up the fact that other kids (and his father) accuse him of being gay as a way of bullying him:
- The Snack Is More Interesting: Mike's mother tries to referee her kids around the dinner table while his father silently eats without helping. As the dinner disintegrates, the mother pointedly asks the father if he's enjoying the chicken.
- Soundtrack Dissonance: "White Rabbit" by Jefferson Airplane plays when The Men in Black kill Benny and chase after El.
- Vertical Kidnapping: The scientist in the opening scene is pulled up the elevator ceiling.
- With Catlike Tread: When making plans to meet up with Nancy, Steve claims he'll be stealthy, "like a ninja." Later, he climbs in her bedroom window, tripping and stumbling about noisily, and getting seen by Mike.Steve: What'd I tell ya? Ninja.
- You Are Number 6: The girl calls herself Eleven when Benny asks her name.
