- Aside from Watchmen and The Stand, the writers of Lost have confirmed that the greatest influence on the show is The Prisoner, a popular 17-episode classic British television series about a former spy who retires and is sent to a mysterious island known as The Village. Dubbed "Number Six", because everyone in The Village is known by a number and not a name, his various escape attempts are constantly thwarted by those around him. For seventeen episodes, after dealing with a rotating assortment of characters dubbed Number Two, who, for all intents and purposes serve as The Village's day-to-day managers and obvious stand-ins for the Others, particularly folks like Goodwin, Ethan and even Ben, Number Six finally identifies Number One when he encounters the island's "warden" cloaked and masked in an underground compound. The face of Number One, staring back at Number Six, is his own.
- Jack is ostensibly the default main character of the ensemble that is the cast of Lost.
- Like Jacob, Jack has brown eyes. Also, the brief snippet of Jacob we behold in "The Man Behind the Curtain" looks like an aged Jack.
- While many characters and people are genuinely referred to as "great" over the years (Magnus, as in Magnus Hanso, literally translates into "Great", and "DeGroot" is Dutch for "The Great"), including Tito Reyes, the Biblical Aaron, Yemi (Eko's brother), Juliet refers to Ben and Goodwin as "great" without meaning it. Ben, Mikhail, Tom and all the Others have, at various times, referred to Jacob as "a great man".
- The only main character to be referred to as a "great man" is Jack Shepard, first by Christian Shepard in "Outlaws" ("He's not like me, he does what's in his heart. He's a good man, maybe a great one"), and then by Achara in "Stranger in a Strange Land", who also notes that he is a "leader" and tattoos him with the phrase "He walks among us, but he is not one of us." "One of Us" is the name of an episode focusing on the past of Juliet, a former member of the Others. This could be taken to me that Jack isn't really one of the Castaways, but really, at heart, the true leader of the Others.
- Aldous Huxley's Jacob's Hands is about a magical healer. Jack is a doctor (healer) on an island with magical healing properties.
- After getting off the Island, Jack turns to alcoholism because he's figured out his exact path in life (thanks to Bentham possibly telling him) and it scares him. When he meets with Kate, he tells her "We have to go back." That doesn't necessarily mean just "to the Island", but it could also mean "in time". Jack needs to go back in time and become Jacob, thus being imbued with the supernatural abilities Jacob appears to have.
- The only people allowed to take up residence in Jacob's cabin are direct relatives of Jack's: his father, Christian, and his half-sister, Claire. Hurley and Locke were both allowed to see the cabin, and Locke was allowed to enter it. Jack/Jacob, being aware of the impending crash of 815 and now sharing a symbiotic connection with the Island while at the same time retaining his memories, keeps the future/past in check by exacting his revenge upon Ben, giving him cancer, and giving his past self yet another thing to fix. Ben begins to lose his connection to Jacob, with Locke picking up the slack less than three months later. The Island, and Jacob/Jack, have finally had their revenge on Benjamin Linus. He allows Locke to see his future self and maintain his connection due to many things, among them Locke's ignorance of his family life, the destiny of the "Man of Faith" that he has become, and the memories that this is how it happened and this is how it's supposed to be. Hurley is used as a divining rod to find Jacob's cabin because everybody loves Hurley; he is harmless, and not even angry, spiteful future Jack will harm him. This may also have something to do with the Numbers, although I'm not quite sure what yet.
- In "Exodus, Part 2", Locke tells Jack that the doctor believes in destiny but he "just [doesn't] know it yet", and goes on to call him a "liar" in "There's No Place Like Home". Jacob is Hebrew for "deciever" or "liar". Ben says that Jacob isn't a "forgiving" type, just as Jack has shown an inability to let go of past grudges, be it with Tom, Locke, Christian, Sawyer or others. This would also give the "Future Jack gave Ben cancer" theory an extra push, despite Future Jack's concern with maintaining the timeline, a la Ms. Hawking in "Flashes Before Your Eyes" and "The Lie".
- Jacob doesn't like technology. The technology of flight caused Jack Shepard and a pregnant Claire Littleton to be stranded on the Island; the advent of guns and C4 has cost him many friends, as well as the allegiance of Sun Kwon; cell phone technology led Jack to the discovery that his wife, Sarah, was seeing another man; and what he percieves as the lack of advancement in medical technology, as opposed to his desire to overcome great challenges, is what cost the life of Adam Rutherford and led to his eventual failed marriage.
- Ben does not know who Jacob is, despite any possibly protests to the contrary. He doesn't understand Jacob's anger, for example, when he shakes the cabin. Additionally, Jack may be playing games with the Others, forcing them to figure out who he is or who he's connected to among the survivors, hence their obsession with lists, genetic testing and pregnancy (at least among the castaways). It's entirely possible that with Ben's visit to Jack in the funeral parlor in "There's No Place Like Home", he has either figured it out completely or has started to, and is conning Jack in a multitude of ways: to get everyone back to the Island as Jack was their leader, but also to curb favor with the future Jacob, potentially allowing him to return to his "true" home, as Ben was, as they say, "voted off the Island". This strengthens the notion that Jack is aware of his future. John Locke, aka Jeremy Bentham, came to Jack and told him everything he knew, which turned Jack into a hollow shell of a man. When Jack returns, he will have started to fulfill his destiny, just as Locke's "corpse" will embark on the next stage of his own, which we now know is not really to lead the Others ("Jughead").
- Richard, annoyed with a young Locke's failure to pass the "Dali Llama test", realizes that Locke is not the Messiah that the Island is looking for. Perhaps at some point we will see Richard encounter a young Jack Shepard.
- It's entirely possible that "The Incident", Jacob's/Jack's return to and communion with the Island, and whatever stopped allowing women to give birth were all the same occurrence. This, however, does not account for Jughead, which was probably in the Swan station, anyway.
- Jacob's "Help me" to Locke is not a plea for Locke to help him. It is a plea for Locke to convince, or help, Jack to come back to the Island when the time comes, or maybe keep him on it permanently. It is highly probable Locke/Bentham killed himself or purposely had himself bit by the Medusa spider (or concocted a special variation of their venom, so as to incur a death-like state lasting more than eight hours) in order to "help" Jack come back home.
- Jack's ruptured appendix in Season 4 is entirely due to Future Jack/Jacob trying to force his past self to stay on the Island and correct what he feels are "flaws" in the original timeline. As "the universe has a way of course-correcting", as Desmond and Ms. Hawking say, little to nothing is changed due to the fact that the appendix was removed and Jack left with the others.
- Locke knows Jack is Jacob as early as "Through the Looking Glass", when Jack has the satellite phone and is told by John "you're not supposed to do this." He's following up on his advice to "help me."
- Jack is ostensibly the default main character of the ensemble that is the cast of Lost.
- Like Jacob, Jack has brown eyes. Also, the brief snippet of Jacob we behold in "The Man Behind the Curtain" looks like an aged Jack.
- While many characters and people are genuinely referred to as "great" over the years (Magnus, as in Magnus Hanso, literally translates into "Great", and "DeGroot" is Dutch for "The Great"), including Tito Reyes, the Biblical Aaron, Yemi (Eko's brother), Juliet refers to Ben and Goodwin as "great" without meaning it. Ben, Mikhail, Tom and all the Others have, at various times, referred to Jacob as "a great man".
- The only main character to be referred to as a "great man" is Jack Shepard, first by Christian Shepard in "Outlaws" ("He's not like me, he does what's in his heart. He's a good man, maybe a great one"), and then by Achara in "Stranger in a Strange Land", who also notes that he is a "leader" and tattoos him with the phrase "He walks among us, but he is not one of us." "One of Us" is the name of an episode focusing on the past of Juliet, a former member of the Others. This could be taken to me that Jack isn't really one of the Castaways, but really, at heart, the true leader of the Others.
- Aldous Huxley's Jacob's Hands is about a magical healer. Jack is a doctor (healer) on an island with magical healing properties.
- After getting off the Island, Jack turns to alcoholism because he's figured out his exact path in life (thanks to Bentham possibly telling him) and it scares him. When he meets with Kate, he tells her "We have to go back." That doesn't necessarily mean just "to the Island", but it could also mean "in time". Jack needs to go back in time and become Jacob, thus being imbued with the supernatural abilities Jacob appears to have.
- The only people allowed to take up residence in Jacob's cabin are direct relatives of Jack's: his father, Christian, and his half-sister, Claire. Hurley and Locke were both allowed to see the cabin, and Locke was allowed to enter it. Jack/Jacob, being aware of the impending crash of 815 and now sharing a symbiotic connection with the Island while at the same time retaining his memories, keeps the future/past in check by exacting his revenge upon Ben, giving him cancer, and giving his past self yet another thing to fix. Ben begins to lose his connection to Jacob, with Locke picking up the slack less than three months later. The Island, and Jacob/Jack, have finally had their revenge on Benjamin Linus. He allows Locke to see his future self and maintain his connection due to many things, among them Locke's ignorance of his family life, the destiny of the "Man of Faith" that he has become, and the memories that this is how it happened and this is how it's supposed to be. Hurley is used as a divining rod to find Jacob's cabin because everybody loves Hurley; he is harmless, and not even angry, spiteful future Jack will harm him. This may also have something to do with the Numbers, although I'm not quite sure what yet.
- In "Exodus, Part 2", Locke tells Jack that the doctor believes in destiny but he "just [doesn't] know it yet", and goes on to call him a "liar" in "There's No Place Like Home". Jacob is Hebrew for "deciever" or "liar". Ben says that Jacob isn't a "forgiving" type, just as Jack has shown an inability to let go of past grudges, be it with Tom, Locke, Christian, Sawyer or others. This would also give the "Future Jack gave Ben cancer" theory an extra push, despite Future Jack's concern with maintaining the timeline, a la Ms. Hawking in "Flashes Before Your Eyes" and "The Lie".
- Jacob doesn't like technology. The technology of flight caused Jack Shepard and a pregnant Claire Littleton to be stranded on the Island; the advent of guns and C4 has cost him many friends, as well as the allegiance of Sun Kwon; cell phone technology led Jack to the discovery that his wife, Sarah, was seeing another man; and what he percieves as the lack of advancement in medical technology, as opposed to his desire to overcome great challenges, is what cost the life of Adam Rutherford and led to his eventual failed marriage.
- Ben does not know who Jacob is, despite any possibly protests to the contrary. He doesn't understand Jacob's anger, for example, when he shakes the cabin. Additionally, Jack may be playing games with the Others, forcing them to figure out who he is or who he's connected to among the survivors, hence their obsession with lists, genetic testing and pregnancy (at least among the castaways). It's entirely possible that with Ben's visit to Jack in the funeral parlor in "There's No Place Like Home", he has either figured it out completely or has started to, and is conning Jack in a multitude of ways: to get everyone back to the Island as Jack was their leader, but also to curb favor with the future Jacob, potentially allowing him to return to his "true" home, as Ben was, as they say, "voted off the Island". This strengthens the notion that Jack is aware of his future. John Locke, aka Jeremy Bentham, came to Jack and told him everything he knew, which turned Jack into a hollow shell of a man. When Jack returns, he will have started to fulfill his destiny, just as Locke's "corpse" will embark on the next stage of his own, which we now know is not really to lead the Others ("Jughead").
- Richard, annoyed with a young Locke's failure to pass the "Dali Llama test", realizes that Locke is not the Messiah that the Island is looking for. Perhaps at some point we will see Richard encounter a young Jack Shepard.
- It's entirely possible that "The Incident", Jacob's/Jack's return to and communion with the Island, and whatever stopped allowing women to give birth were all the same occurrence. This, however, does not account for Jughead, which was probably in the Swan station, anyway.
- Jacob's "Help me" to Locke is not a plea for Locke to help him. It is a plea for Locke to convince, or help, Jack to come back to the Island when the time comes, or maybe keep him on it permanently. It is highly probable Locke/Bentham killed himself or purposely had himself bit by the Medusa spider (or concocted a special variation of their venom, so as to incur a death-like state lasting more than eight hours) in order to "help" Jack come back home.
- Jack's ruptured appendix in Season 4 is entirely due to Future Jack/Jacob trying to force his past self to stay on the Island and correct what he feels are "flaws" in the original timeline. As "the universe has a way of course-correcting", as Desmond and Ms. Hawking say, little to nothing is changed due to the fact that the appendix was removed and Jack left with the others.
- Locke knows Jack is Jacob as early as "Through the Looking Glass", when Jack has the satellite phone and is told by John "you're not supposed to do this." He's following up on his advice to "help me."
I don't personally think that's what's going to happen but I've been wrong before.
