Trivia / The Twilight Zone (2019)

• Cast the Expert: Podcast veteran Dan Carlin of Hardcore History fame provides the voice of the Enigmatique podcast in "Nightmare at 30,000 Feet".
• Dueling Works:
  • With another reboot of a classic science fiction anthology series that premiered under a year later, Apple TV+'s Amazing Stories. While both received mixed audience reception, Twilight Zone was both more popular and achieved more critical praise (at least in its first season).
  • In the same year as the first season, two films, See You Yesterday and Don't Let Go, featured remarkably similar plots to the episode "Replay", in which a Black character must use time travel/time displacement to save a family member from being murdered (with the murderer in See You Yesterday also being a racist cop a la "Replay").
• In Memoriam: The second season premiere Meet in the Middle is dedicated to Rod Serling's wife Carolyn Serling, who passed away in January 2020.
• Playing Against Type:
  • Alex Rubens, writer for Key & Peele, Community and Rick and Morty, wrote the episode "The Comedian".
  • Andrew Guest, writer for Community and Brooklyn Nine-Nine, wrote the episode "The Wunderkind".
  • Heather Anne Campbell, a performer on Whose Line Is It Anyway?, wrote the episodes "Six Degrees of Freedom" and "Not All Men".
  • Applies to some of the actors as well:
    • Tracy Morgan, typically known for light-hearted comedic roles, plays the chilling, perhaps not entirely human J.C. Wheeler in "The Comedian." Granted, he's playing an ex-comedian, but the character is almost entirely played seriously.
    • Steven Yeun, best known for playing the heroic, kind-hearted Glenn in The Walking Dead (2010) plays A. Traveler, a mysterious, sinister figure who uses his skills of manipulation to turn a town's citizens against each other and ultimately turns out to be an ambassador for an invading alien race.
• Playing with Character Type:
  • Jacob Tremblay is known for playing sweet, good-natured boys in the likes of Room, Good Boys, and Doctor Sleep. Initially, it seems like he is playing his usual character type with Oliver, but it is subverted when it turns out that Oliver is a bratty, megalomaniacal Enfante Terrible.
• Milestone Celebration: Premiered in 2019, the year of the original series' 60th anniversary.
• Prop Recycling: The ventriloquist dummy seen in the background of "The Comedian" is the actual dummy used in the episodes "The Dummy" and "Caesar and Me". It is owned by David Copperfield, and was lent to the show under the condition that the magician would be referenced in the episode. Samir name drops him when talking to J.C. Wheeler the second time.
  Samir: I wanted to be the next Chris Rock, not... evil David Copperfield!
• You Look Familiar: "The Who of You" wouldn't be Ethan Embry's first visit to the Twilight Zone. He previously appeared in the 2000s series as Zack Walker, the protagonist of "Time Lapse".

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