The only known method of time travel in the Outlander series is traversing a certain geographic location, often indicated by a natural or man-made landmark including the most significant in the series, Craigh na Dun, the location of the fictitious ancient stone circle by which Claire Randall travels from 1945 to 1743. Its distinguishing feature is the large cleft stone.

Claire Beauchamp Randall Fraser is a nurse, later a doctor, and a time-traveler who has lived both in the 20th century and the 18th century. While on a second honeymoon in Scotland with her husband, Frank Randall, Claire accidentally travels two hundred years into the past, where she meets and eventually marries Jamie Fraser.

Costume designer for the Outlander television series, Terry Dresbach, takes time-traveling heroine Claire Fraser (Caitriona Balfe) from World War II to the 18th-century Scottish Highlands and the French court of Louis XV, back to Scotland for the Jacobite Rising of 1745, to mid-20th century Boston, and finally, to pre-Revolutionary America!

Clava Cairns, near the Culloden battlefield, may be the inspiration for Outlander’s fictitious stone circle, Craigh na Dun. The stone circles and burial chambers at Clava Cairns date back 4,000 years to the Bronze Age. This isn’t the earliest known use of the site either, as archaeological excavations has found it was once used for farming.

In the novel, James "Jamie" Alexander Malcom MacKenzie Fraser was born in the Scottish Highlands, at the family home of Lallybroch and raised to be the future laird. But after a series of family tragedies, is sent to live with his maternal uncle, Dougal MacKenzie. Dougal, left-handed like Jamie, teaches him to wield a sword with both hands.