First, in 1958, while Donald P. Bellisario was at El Toro in the process of separating from the Marine Corps, he drove down to visit some buddies at MACS-9 and stopped by the supply depot. There, he was astonished to find a young Marine reading Communist newspapers and spouting Communist propaganda. The two had a very heated argument, although other Marines told Bellisario the guy was harmless. A few years later, when Bellisario saw Kennedy's assassin on television (and heard he was a former Marine), he recognized him as the Marine he'd had the argument with. Bellisario spent the the next few years doing his own research about the assassination, never doubting Oswald's capacity to be the lone gunman.
Years later, in 1991, Bellisario's teenage son Michael saw the movie JFK, and came home raving about the conspiracies surrounding Kennedy's murder. Bellisario was so incensed about the film's message that he decided to break his cardinal rule about Quantum Leap and have Sam leap into a real person in the middle of actual events, to show that Oswald was indeed very capable of doing this on his own.
Troubled Production: Downplayed: As recounted by a Los Angeles Times article concerning the episode's production, there was some trouble had in recreating Oswald's shots due to the prop gun repeatedly jamming.
On the "Quantum Leap" sound stage earlier this summer, an actor posing as Lee Harvey Oswald points an authentic Mannlicher-Carcano rifle—just like the one that the Warren Commission concluded Oswald used to kill Kennedy—out a fake movie-set window. Peering through the scope, he pulls the trigger and a loud shot echoes through the cavernous building. The actor cranks the rifle to eject the spent cartridge and chamber another, but the mechanism jams.
Bellisario's brush with Oswald, coupled with having lived in Dallas for eight years in the late '60s and '70s, prompted him to take more than a casual interest in the minutia of the Kennedy assassination. But he said that he had mostly forgotten about it until his son and the younger members of his staff started preaching the merits of conspiracy after watching Stone's movie.
in the process of separating from the Marine Corps, he drove down to visit some buddies at MACS-9 and stopped by the supply depot. There, he was astonished to find a young Marine reading Communist newspapers and spouting Communist propaganda. The two had a very heated argument, although other Marines told Bellisario the guy was harmless. A few years later, when Bellisario saw Kennedy's assassin on television (and heard he was a former Marine), he recognized him as the Marine he'd had the argument with. Bellisario spent the the next few years doing his own research about the assassination, never doubting Oswald's capacity to be the lone gunman.