10 Things We Can Thank Richard Matheson For
5. Making The Twilight Zone Memorable - The Invaders, Nightmare At 20,000 Feet, Steel, etc. 
To be clear, almost anyone who ever wrote for The Twilight Zone had a hand in making it memorable, and in addition to the most prolific writer on the showRod Serlingthere were the likes of Charles Beaumont, Ray Bradbury, and George Clayton Johnson scripting episodes. Matheson, though, might have the greatest dearth of unforgettable episodes to his name, outside of Serling himself. Admittedly, Nightmare at 20,000 Feet, featuring a paranoid man looking out the window to see a gremlin on the wing of his airplane, is arguably the one people often recall first, likely because its got not one, but two memorable adaptations. Shatner delivered the first beautifully insane performance, and John Lithgow took the role in the 1984 movie version; at the time of Mathesons death, Lithgow tweeted that the writer was responsible for his greatest line of dialogue: Theres a man on the wing of this plane! Mathesons contribution to Zone went much further than just Nightmare, and in fact further than the sixteen or so episodes he helped conceive and/or write. His imprint changed the show itself, and mixed well with Rod Serlings own sensibilities, demanding a higher level of quality when it came to blending various genres with a realistic verve. Mathesons accomplishments range from the nearly wordless classic The Invaders, which featured an addled Agnes Morehead fighting off miniature aliens (foreshadowing Trilogy of Terror), to expertly told speculative pieces like Steel, starring Lee Marvin and inspiring Hugh Jackmans Real Steel, and Third from the Sun, a pitch-perfect template for the Zone style if there ever was one. You can find most of his contributions in full, for free, on Hulu.