The Most Pause-Worthy Moments From Lost

Of all of the many mysteries the survivors of Flight 815 encounter on the Island, one of the more enigmatic and bizarre is that of the Swan station computer. According to Desmond Hume (Henry Ian Cusick) — who inherited his directive from Kelvin Inman (Clancy Brown) and is all too happy to pass it on to the mid-section survivors — a number must be inputted into the Swan station's retro-licious computer every 108 minutes. Failure to do so, he explains, will have devastating consequences. To keep the operators on task, the Swan station is equipped with an old-school number-flipping countdown clock on the wall, and an alarm begins to sound after the counter reaches T-minus four minutes.

With such a strict schedule to keep, it's unsurprising that there's eventually a breakdown in the system, especially with the chronic disunity that plagues the survivors. As John Locke learns in "One of Them" (Season 2, Episode 14), once the timer runs out, its tiles flip from the relatively neutral black-and-white number tiles to an ominous red and black, with the numbers replaced with cryptic hieroglyphs. Hieroglyphs are a recurring theme on the Island and within the series. They can be found on Benjamin Linus' secret door, in the frozen wheel chamber, on the temple wall, and inside the lighthouse, as just a few examples.

According to Damon Lindelof in the "Lost" Season 4 DVD bonus features, the producers consulted an Egyptian hieroglyphics expert to create these details for the series. In the Season 3 DVD bonus "Access: Granted," the showrunners explained that the Swan station hieroglyphics were intended to translate to "Underworld."

Fans immediately know "Lost" takes place on an island with unique zoological features when the survivors encounter their first polar bear in the pilot (Season 1, Episode 2). Eventually, viewers learn that the Island was once the hub of the Dharma Initiative's various forays into zoological experimentation. As Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse explained in "The Official Lost Podcast," the Dharma crew would routinely flood the Hydra station so they could experiment on dolphins and sharks. One of these Dharma test subjects makes an appearance in "Adrift" (Season 2, Episode 2) as Michael (Harold Perrineau) and Sawyer (Josh Holloway) are clinging to the wreckage of their raft after the Others kidnap and abscond with Walt (Malcolm David Kelley), shooting Sawyer in the process.

As if the pair didn't have enough to deal with, Sawyer's blood attracts the interest of a shark who relentlessly attacks the pontoons the men are clinging to until Michael fires off several rounds, which either finishes off the "toothy son of a b****" or gets the message across that he isn't welcome. Before the gun sends the shark packing, a view of the raft's underside reveals this fish has an interesting feature — a Dharma Initiative logo stamped on his tail. In the podcast, Cuse and Lindelof joked that the shark's name is Ezra James Sharkington, and he may or may not have received his tattoo in Thailand from the same person who inked Jack.

The Island of "Lost" is full of strange and surreal locations — creepy retro hatches, a hieroglyph-covered temple guarded by a four-toed statue, a cute little suburban neighborhood, and even a pirate ship that's too far inland to make a lick of obvious sense. And that's to say nothing of the wheel that literally moves the entire Island across time and space. But one of the Island's eerier locales is the dark and possibly haunted cabin a few of the survivors encounter. John Locke (Terry O'Quinn) first enters the cabin when Ben Linus (Michael Emerson) drags him there on the survivors' 89th day in "The Man Behind the Curtain" (Season 3, Episode 20). Inside the cabin, Ben goes full Charleton Heston, striking up a conversation with what appears to be an empty chair. As the men are leaving amid Locke's accusations that Ben is playing games, things take a supernatural turn. A seemingly disembodied voice pleads with Locke to, in his words, "help me." The room begins to shake, objects are thrown about by an unseen force, and Ben is slammed against a wall. And for a split second, someone seems to appear across the room. Viewers are given a brief glimpse of a mysterious eye, but it's unclear whose face it belongs to.

When they first crash-land on the Island, most of the survivors have at least one big secret they're hanging onto, and the showrunners do a pretty good job of keeping their cards close to the vest for as long as possible. Even though Hurley drops hints at his lottery winnings to other characters, he never presents himself like a man with money, which makes the truth come as a surprise when it is eventually revealed. There's also Kate's past as a fugitive, Sun's secret English proficiency, and Sawyer's con artist double-reveal where it turns out he isn't the original Sawyer his letter is addressed to. But by far, the best of the survivors' revelations is the sneaky secret Locke is harboring from the moment he first wakes up on the Island.

Among the survivors, Locke seems to have an innate connection to the Island. He quickly demonstrates an aptitude for hunting and survivalism, which makes us feel initially confused and frustrated by his flashbacks in "Walkabout" (Season 1, Episode 4), where everyone seems to underestimate him. This frustration peaks when Locke arrives in Australia and the walkabout guide bars him from the tour. When the camera pans out to reveal John's wheelchair, it's delightfully clear the showrunners pulled a fast one. In an interview with Vox, Lindelof called the episode a "litmus test" for the series, recalling that it the reveal represented "a moment of profound faith and reassurance in what we were doing, surrounded by doubt and trepidation on either side of it."

Stories within stories play an important role in "Lost" from Sawyer's epistolary struggle with the man responsible for his parents' death to the exotic dancer crime TV series "Exposé." Books also seem to be fairly important to characters whose lives intersect with the Island. Sawyer, whose name is likely an allusion to Mark Twain's "Tom Sawyer," is an avid reader, repeatedly reading and referencing the books "Of Mice and Men," "Watership Down," "A Wrinkle in Time," and Walker Percy's "Lancelot." Then there's Desmond, who carries a copy of Charles Dickens' "Our Mutual Friend" with him everywhere with plans to read it before he dies — in the flash sideways, he carries a copy of Salman Rushdie's "Haroun and the Sea of Stories" ("LAX," Season 6, Episode 1). So, it should come as no surprise that the Others have their own very contentious little book club, which just so happens to be meeting at the moment Flight 815 crashes ("A Tale of Two Cities," Season 3, Episode 1).

Adam calls out Juliet's choice of literature as "by-the-numbers religious hokum-pokum," groaning that Ben "wouldn't read this in the damned bathroom," while Juliet insists that it is her favorite book. When Ben later spots the book Juliet is still holding, he tells her, "So I guess I'm out of the book club." For viewers still wondering what this controversial novel is, this is the perfect spot to pause, revealing that the book is Stephen King's "Carrie." The 1974 horror story is about a powerful young woman trapped in unbearable circumstances, something that Juliet would surely find relatable.

The survivors of Oceanic Flight 815 had a tendency to bump into each other before fate brought them together on the Island. But one of the "tailies" (that's a vernacular term for survivors from the plane's tail-end) tends to sport a different look and increasingly more enigmatic backstory every time she shows up. From the first moment Hurley meets Libby (Cynthia Watros) on the Island until their relationship is unfortunately cut short, there's a definite chemistry between the pair. Although Libby claims to be a clinical psychologist in "The Other 48 Days" (Season 2, Episode 7) there is no evidence of this in her flashbacks, and the pieces of her life that are shown don't seem to add up without some missing pieces viewers never get in the series. Unlike the other characters on the Island, Libby seems to be fond of changing up her look.

At one point, she is shown meeting Desmond in a coffee shop while wearing straight strawberry blond hair and bangs ("Live Together, Die Alone, Part 1" Season 2, Episode 23), whereas on the Island, her hair is a wavy dark blond. But her strangest appearance comes at the end of "Dave" (Season 2, Episode 18), when Libby shows up in Hurley's flashback to the mental institution. Sulking in the corner is a very traumatized-looking chestnut-haired Libby, and she doesn't seem to be there in a clinical psychologist capacity.