Mash / Tropes A to I

A to I | J to Z

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A-C

• Accent Slip-Up: In the episode "Dear Comrade" where the narrating character, Kwang, is a new houseboy Dr. Charles Winchester hires to clean around his area, get his food, etc., and is a North Korean spy. When he talks with the Americans, Kwang uses broken English as is stereotypical of an Asian learning English second. In the final scene when he is celebrating with the doctors drinking some good whiskey, he ends up speaking better English than previously shown. The doctors, while thoroughly inebriated as well, take note of the improvement but Kwang simply states it is the good whiskey causing it to everyone's laughter.
• Acoustic License:
  • Subverted in the final episode, "Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen". As B.J. is departing, Klinger tells Col. Potter that his discharge orders were rescinded, but Potter pretends to be unable to hear the message because the helicopter taking him away is too loud.
  • Also averted when orders have to be relayed down a long vehicle convoy when the 4077 is moving camp. This is then Played for Laughs when Father Mulcahy decides to bless the new site, with the words of his prayer shouted from one truck to the next.
• Acronym Confusion: Invoked by Colonel Flagg.
  "I'm with the CIA^note Central Intelligence Agency, but I tell people I'm with the CIC^note Army Counter Intelligence Corps, so they think I'm with the CID ^note Army Criminal Investigation Division."
• Actor Allusion:
  • Larry Linville guest starred on the original Mission: Impossible in three separate episodes, each time as an Eastern Bloc official (though never the same one twice) who all act a good deal like his later characterization of Burns, minus the comedic edge.
  • Allan Arbus's role as Sidney Freedman harks back to his appearance as Jesus in the 1972 film Greaser's Palace. ("If you can feel, heal!")
  • Klinger, as one of his Section 8 scams, pretends to be a civilian back in Toledo and that Colonel Potter is a cop and angrily barks: "I pay your salary!", a line famously said to Joe Friday in the 1954 movie version of Dragnet. Harry Morgan (who played Potter) wasn't in that version of Dragnet, however, co-starring in the 1967 incarnation of the franchise, instead.
  • Lance Cpl. Lyle Wesson in "Springtime" is basically Mongo in uniform.
• Actually Pretty Funny: Charles isn't above laughing at jokes at his expense.
  Charles: You know, Pierce, what you could use is a humility transplant.
  Hawkeye: Unfortunately, you'll never be a donor.
  Charles: [chuckles] How unkind.
• Adaptational Angst Upgrade: Even before the series really starts kicking him with Sometimes You Hear The Bullet onwards, TV-Hawkeye has abandonment issues and his answer to any Sanity Slippage accusations is why shouldn’t he be losing his mind.
• Adaptation Distillation: Many of the characters from the film (most notably Duke Forrest and Painless Pole, but also Seidman, Bandini, Judson, Vollmer, Murrhardt, etc.) are eliminated from the series altogether. Others, such as Ho-Jon, Lt. Dish, Ugly John and Spearchucker Jones disappear without explanation even before the first season is over.
• Adaptational Nice Guy: Trapper in the show never gets the reason for his nickname mentioned.
• Adaptation Personality Change:
  • Intentionally with Hawkeye, as he went from a married republican redneck in the books to a flamboyant liberal Attention Whore with psychological problems. The creators talked about how, aside from wanting a pretty and charismatic lead, the Hawkeye in the books and film couldn’t carry a show for long, and this way he could get Character Development. Hornberger raged at length about the character being “too whiny, too liberal and too sexual”.
  • Henry in the movie was regular army and had no sympathy for Houlihan getting humiliated. Henry in the TV show would rather do anything but do army duties, and while Margaret and Potter were much closer, he was a Bumbling Dad type to everyone.
• Affectionate Gesture to the Head: Hawkeye has a habit to cradle the people he love’s heads, whether it’s B.J., Carlye, Tommy or Kyung Soon. When he’s glad Trapper and Kim are safe, he gives both of them a relieved ruffle to the hair.
• Affectionate Nickname: Hawkeye shortens Trapper’s name to “Trap” and B.J. to “Beej”, and they both call him “Hawk” occasionally.
• After-Action Healing Drama: The essence of the unit.
• After Show: The show's spin-off AfterMASH is the trope namer.
• Aliens in Cardiff: No fewer than four characters on the show studied in Illinois.^note Henry Blake, presumably Hawkeye if he was there long enough to develop a taste for Adam's Ribs, Dr. Lin Tan in "Rainbow Bridge", and the titular physician in "The Korean Surgeon". Even more remarkable, two of them were North Korean, one of whom went to the same university as Henry Blake.
• All Are Equal in Death: The episode "Follies of the Living - Concerns of the Dead" is told from the POV of a dead soldier. At the end of the episode he walks down the road toward the afterlife along with all the other dead - U.S. soldiers of various ranks, North Korean soldiers, civilians, etc.
• All Gays are Promiscuous : The writers used a lot of euphemisms throughout eleven seasons to call Hawkeye a slut and queer, and he makes a joke (that both men and women react as true) that he loved “as many” of the camp as he could. A big reason for his Really Gets Around behaviour is that he has an abandonment complex and one time when a patient died on him he said sometimes he feels like he’d be more useful as a hooker, but he also just enjoys sex.
• The Alleged Boss: Lt. Col. Henry Blake was supposed to be in charge of the 4077th but outside of the Operating Room most of his time was spent boozing, recreating, or philandering. His Hyper-Competent Sidekick, Radar, was well understood to be the person actually running the camp. Also, the dueling doctor factions who were supposed to be Henry's subordinates were frequently overstepping or walking all over him in order to carry out their zany schemes. Blake's replacement, Col. Potter, was able to command a lot more respect and thus appear (and be) more in charge.
  • Henry was a bit of a mix between varieties 1 and 4 of this trope: He was a genuinely nice guy most of the time, and meant well, but had no idea how to run things, and would openly defer to his subordinates whenever any administrative decision had to be made. He was very competent and authoritative as a doctor, however, and several of his subordinates felt true affection and comradeship towards him, knowing that he was trying his best.
• Always Someone Better: In "Chief Surgeon Who?", this is Hawkeye to Frank. Henry assigns the position of the 4077th chief surgeon to Hawkeye, and boy does Frank resent it:
  Frank: This is unheard of!
  Henry: Face it, Pierce is the best cutter in the outfit. He's certified in chest and general surgery. Frank, in case you haven't read the papers, there's a war on. We're here to patch guys together! We can't be so G.I. we lose patients!
  Frank: Are you implying he's a better doctor?!
  Henry: Yes, when the heat's on!
  • In "Smilin' Jack," this was fellow chopper pilot Dangerous Dan to Jack, who was bucking for Chopper Pilot of the Year. Jack was grounded after being diagnosed for diabetes, but not before he picks up four more wounded soldiers from the front aid station. As Jack boards the bus for a ground position, Dangerous Dan shows up with two more wounded to put him back in the lead.
• Always on Duty: Justified as the 4077th is a combat hospital only 3 miles or so from the front line and need to be ready to receive wounded at any time. Multiple references are made to the surgical staff spending 24+ hours in surgery during major offensives and characters have been recalled from leave due to a surge in wounded.
• Ambiguously Jewish: Sidney Freedman
• Am I Just a Toy to You?:
  • Inverted, as all series long Hawkeye is more than happy to be the rehearsal for engaged women, an alternative to Margaret for horny generals, or Trapper/B.J.’s alternate wives. He’s semi-serious for most of this, but even Mulcahy is aware that one of his "talents" is sex.
  • Played straight with Margaret and Frank, as she’s sick of being his sidepiece and wants him to get a divorce so they can marry instead.
• And You Thought That Was Bad: An occasional aesop is that while it’s certainly no picnic at the camp, it’s a lot worse at the front. Serves as B.J.’s Despair Event Horizon, as in Bombshells he has to cut a rope and leave an injured man, gets a medal for the “bravery” and can’t face doing his and Hawkeye’s snarking from the backlines anymore.
• Anachronism Stew: Enough for its own page.
• Animal Lover: Walter O'Reilly tends to a small menagerie of animals in the camp and once saved a lamb from being made into lamb chops.
• Animated Parody: Filmation's M*U*S*H, a segment of the Saturday Morning Kid's Show Uncle Croc's Block.
• Anonymous Benefactor: Charles, in "Death Takes a Holiday".
• Answer to Prayers: Father Mulcahy lives by the Bible, and prays regularly. Some of his granted prayers are heartbreaking, though, such as the time they needed an arterial graft from a patient who was mortally wounded, but not dead yet, to save another soldier. "Father, I've never asked this before, and I don't know what you'll think of me for asking now, but if you're going to take the other boy, take him soon so we can save the other one " They do succeed.
• Anti-Alcohol Aesop: Hawkeye, surprised by a large bar tab, does some math and concludes that he's been drinking an awful lot in the Officer's Club, and then notes that it doesn't include his homemade hooch from the still he's assembled in his tent. Winchester tries to assuage him by noting that War Is Hell and even his own drinking has increased slightly during his time in Korea. But Hawk points out that Winchester's got nothing on what he himself has been consuming. He goes on the wagon, saying he'll try to take a week off of booze. He then spends the week driving everyone nuts with his temperance lectures. Until, that is, a very grueling session in the operating room, including trying to put the pin back in a live grenade. When he's done, they all go over to the Officer's Club, where, to everyone's shock, Hawkeye orders a drink.
  Hawkeye: I admit it, alright! I need this drink. (realizes what he just said and gets up) I'll be back when I want it, not when I need it.
• The Anticipator: Radar has the uncanny ability to appear at the side of his commander before he even asks for him, as well as finish his sentences. A bevy of other sensing talents makes him this trope.
• Anyone Can Die: Henry's death was as shattering and it was unexpected for all the deaths and injuries of one-shot characters.
• Aren't You Going to Ravish Me?:
  • Hawkeye pops up at the end of "Captain’s Outrageous", seizing on military violation wordplay, saying he’s military and has never been violated in Rosie’s Bar, so he doesn’t know why he keeps coming back. As is common with his rape jokes, everyone looks uncomfortable and swiftly changes the subject.
  • Margaret in “The Gun” is disgusted at both the thought of Radar (accidentally) leering at her, and the thought of him not finding her attractive.
• Armchair Military: There is an astonishingly large number of higher-ranking Army officers that seem to have very little idea of what they're actually doing. We actually get to see one, a friend of Potter's named Woody, who decides to take command in a combat situation when he's been behind a desk for decades, and ends up causing a lot of men to get hurt when he orders them to advance on an exposed ridge that they'd previously been ordered to stay away from.
• Appetite Equals Health: After Klinger has a Fever Dream Episode and talks to a dead soldier, at the end of the episode he wakes up in post-op and reports that he's hungry. Margaret says that it's a good sign.
• Apocalypse Anarchy: In one episode when they think that they are all about to be killed, several of the officers get together for a high-stakes poker game. Trapper asks, "So, what are the stakes again?" Hawkeye explains that the values are $5,000 for the white chips, $10,000 for the red, and $25,000 for the blue. He then clarifies, "And if we don't die, whites are 25¢, reds are 50¢, and blues are a dollar."
• Apology Gift: Happens several times over the course of the series.
  • In one episode, Hawkeye and Trapper try to butter Frank up with a handful of wild flowers, after they secretly drew a pint of blood from him to give to a wounded POW; Frank is touched, but then they kill the moment when Hawkeye says, "Glad there's no hard feelings Frank, because there's a new heart procedure we'd like to try, and you're just the right type."
  • During a company picnic, Margaret gives Frank the cold shoulder since he won't loan her money to buy her sister a wedding present; Frank tries to butter her back up with a balloon, only for her to pop it with a hairpin.
  • In another episode, Frank tries to make peace with Margaret (this after she had gotten engaged earlier in the season), by presenting her with an American-made Japanese umbrella; of course, Frank isn't able to curb his lust, and Margaret throws it at him as he runs out of her tent.
  • In "The Winchester Tapes", Charles apparently had upset Radar, and insincerely brings him an entire case of grape Nehi to butter him up in order to contact his former commanding officer to get him transferred back to Tokyo General Hospital. When Radar refuses, Winchester takes the case back. And then he takes the one bottle that Radar had opened.
  • Then there's the one time the gift is actually accepted. In one Christmas episode, most of the staff have been giving Charles the cold shoulder for his unwillingness to donate to the Christmas potluck, despite having received several huge packages from home. When Klinger finds out why — the packages were filled with expensive chocolates that Charles was planning to give to the children at the local orphanage as part of a family tradition — he brings Charles a plate of leftover food and they share a heartfelt moment over it.
• Arc Words:
  • Sidney Freedman's advice in an early appearance and the final episode: "Ladies and gentlemen, take my advice. Pull down your pants and slide on the ice."
  • Count how many times Hawkeye refers to both babies (including a lot of jokes about getting pregnant) and chickens. It amounts to a lot in eleven seasons before the finale.
  • Hawkeye and “dancing”, how to get out of problems, how to survive, and finally in “Who Knew”, how exhausted he is.
• Angrish: “In Love And War”, when Margaret realises that Potter sent Gleeson back to Tokyo (where Donald is), all she can do is make horrified garbled noises.
• An Arm and a Leg: Several episodes deal with patients who lost limbs in battle and are coming to grips with the results. One episode showing Charles' better side dealt with a patient who didn't actually lose a limb, but sustained nerve damage to several fingers that, since he was a gifted, Juilliard-trained pianist, he believes is just as bad as losing the limb outright.
  • Happens to Hawkeye in a nightmare in which a Medical School Professor ordering the removal of his arms symbolizes his frustration at not being able to save every patient and how he tortures himself about it.
• Armed Farces: It's a comedy set in a military camp, so it's to be expected.
• Armor-Piercing Question: "She killed the chicken?"
• Artistic License – Awards: Several:
  • Frank once browbeats Henry into approving a Purple Heart citation and another time he receives a Purple Heart by mistake. Neither time was he eligible. The first, "Sometimes You Hear the Bullet", he receives a Purple Heart for throwing out his back while dancing, which was not a direct result of combat and, more importantly, would cause him to be discharged; back problems were an automatic medical disqualification from service. The second (based on an incident in Vietnam), "The Kids", he gets a Purple Heart for getting a bit of eggshell in his eye but the incident was entered in a report as "shell fragment"; for this one, it's believable that it would go through (because it sounds like something Purple Heart-worthy to anyone who doesn't know better), but by this point, the camp is under the command of Potter, who takes military awards much more seriously and would probably insist that Frank clear up the misconception and return the medal. It's also strange that Margaret Houlihan, who also takes military citations seriously, would go along with it and even back up Frank's application in the former case.
    • In both cases, Hawkeye steals Frank's medal and gives it to someone he feels is more deserving: the first goes to an underage Marine with appendicitis who lied about his age to enlist (which would put him in worse trouble, as he has been reported for identity theft and now has stolen property), and in the second, Hawkeye steals it and gives it to a baby who was grazed by a bullet that went through his mother's abdomen shortly before she gave birth. But in addition to the fact that Frank's name would have been on both medals, those particular medals being stolen would have no long-term impact on Frank anyway; he would have been on record as a two-time recipient of the Purple Heart, and could have been issued replacements for the physical medals. Also, even if he didn't approve of Frank's medal (see previous point), Potter would probably not be on board with just giving a military medal away to a civilian.
  • In "Change of Command", Potter reveals he received a Good Conduct Medal as an enlisted soldier. However, he served in the First World War, became a doctor in 1932 and served in the Second World War as a surgeon, while the Army GCM was established in 1941 and retroactive dates only go to 1940.
    • Weirder still is that he says this to Radar, who, as an enlisted man, should not only already be aware of the GCM, he should have been awarded one by this point (in 1943, eligibility was changed from three years service to one year service during war, or three years otherwise; the pilot is date-stamped as 1950 and "Change of Command" is stated in the voice-over to be September 1952).
    • Potter's uniform◊ shows a Purple Heart, World War II Victory Medal, the US and UN Korea medals and the National Defense Service Medal (which was established in April 1953, so it probably wouldn't exist when this episode takes place), when as a veteran of both World War I and World War II, he should have a Chest of Medals consisting of the World War I Victory Medal and Army of Occupation of Germany Medal, American Defense Service Medal, Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal (since he claimed to be in Guam), European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal (since he claimed to be at the Battle of the Bulge) and Army of Occupation Medal with either Germany or Japan clasp.
  • In "Bombshells", B.J. receives a Bronze Star for helping a medivac chopper escape while under fire, but decides to hand it off to a patient for "getting out in one piece". However, every Bronze Star has the recipient's name engraved on the back and comes with a certificate. As with the Marine, this would put him in possession of an undeserved medal that belonged to someone else (albeit this time, it's with the permission of the rightful owner, though the other man could get in trouble if he wore it), and it would still be B.J. who was on the record as receiving it.
• Artistic License – Cars:
  • In the season three finale, Henry gives Radar the keys to a Jeep, and in "Sometimes You Hear the Bullet" Wendel tries to hotwire a Jeep. Because Jeeps would need to be operated by anyone at any time, all Jeeps had a simple ignition switch instead of a key, something shown somewhat extensively through the series' run. Of course, being a foot soldier he may not have realized that.
  • In "Welcome to Korea", Hawkeye asks Radar if a Jeep is olive drab and made in Detroit. Korean War-era Jeeps were made in Toledo, Ohio.
• Artistic License – Geography:
  • Several references to Korea being in South East Asia, and jungles in Korea.
  • In "Iron Guts Kelly", Radar finds a sector under fire and lists the position as, "North of Inchon, latitude 27, longitude 70." Those coordinates are in extreme western India, near the border with Pakistan, over 3000 miles west of Korea.
  • In ''Abyssinia Henry", Henry's plane is reported as shot down over the Sea of Japan, well beyond where any North Korean or Chinese fighter pilots operated, especially in 1952.
• Artistic License – Gun Safety: see Juggling Loaded Guns.
  • Averted at least once in a deleted scene. In "It Happened One Night," Klinger has just introduced Hawkeye to a new private going on guard duty for the first time. After the discussion, Klinger stands. The private picks up his rifle and inadvertently points it in Klinger's face. Klinger is quick to nudge it away, having anticipated the eventuality upon seeing him pick it up. This trope gets played straight later on when (offscreen) the gun goes off, and Klinger is brought into Post-Op, trying to ham up being fatally shot when the bullet barely nicked him.
    Hawkeye: [as Klinger collapses onto the bed] Would you at least bleed?
  • Hawkeye in "Hawkeye Get Your Gun." The fact Potter cocks the hammer before Hawkeye starts firing means he must carry it loaded and hammer-down. This is the least safe way to carry a 1911. John Browning specifically designed it to be carried loaded with the hammer cocked (Situation One), and included a sear disconnect, a grip safety, and a manual safety (which can't be activated unless the hammer is cocked). This means for it to fire, the manual safety must be deactivated, the grip must be held, and the trigger must be pulled. This isn't that surprising, given Hawkeye's attitude to guns; see Doesn't Like Guns below.
  • Frank Burns is a walking example of how to not handle a firearm. Highlights include shooting B.J. in the leg, shooting himself in the foot, and shooting out a light while chambering a round. Justified as this is specifically portrayed as a function of his incompetence, not as the correct or appropriate way to do things. A notable specific reason for his constant negligent firing is that Frank lacks any trigger discipline. In every scene when he is holding a gun, whether he's aiming at someone, cleaning, or merely walking, his finger is always on the trigger.
• Artistic License – History:
  • In "Foreign Affairs", a MiG-15 pilot lands near the hospital due to engine troubles and is offered a reward similar to Operation Moolah for defecting (with General Mark Clark mentioned by name), which he refuses and is taken to a POW camp. The only flyable MiG-15 to be captured intact occurred in September 1953, after the armistice, and its pilot, Lt. No Kum-Sok, deliberately defected and landed in Kimpo Air Base (he changed his name to Kenneth H. Rowe after defecting). ^note Lt. No claimed to have no idea of the reward because the leaflets were dropped near the Yalu River, when MiG bases had been moved further into Manchuria by then, and North Korean pilots would not have trusted the offer and had no idea the buying power of US dollars (he claimed an offer of freedom and a job in the United States would be more appealing).
  • In the pilot, the year is explicitly 1950 and Hawkeye repeatedly mentions an upcoming battle by Canadian troops, which becomes a plot point at the end when casualties from that battle arrive. While Canada joined the coalition at the beginning of the conflict, Canadian troops only arrived in Korea in December 1950, and following two months of mountain training, first saw combat in February 1951.
• Artistic License – Medicine:
  • Many nurses can be seen with long, manicured fingernails. This is prohibited because, among other things, they have to be able to wear gloves during surgery.
  • In "The Yalu Brick Road," the entire camp is suffering from food poisoning caused by the bad turkey meat that Klinger procured. But the episode incorrectly identifies the condition as salmonella, which is actually caused by eating improperly cooked meat. If it was really salmonella, then the fault would lie with the cook, not Klinger. Even a layman might know this, and an experienced doctor like Colonel Potter (who joins the camp personnel in blaming Klinger) certainly would.
• Artistic License – Military: Enough for its own page.
• Artistic License – Religion: Definitely Played for Laughs, but in "Tuttle", Hawkeye and Trapper list Tuttle's religion as "druid," which Hawkeye explains as "they pray to trees" (but notes Tuttle is "reform" and can pray to bushes, too). Druids were priests in the ancient Celtic religion, not just followers or the name of the religion itself, and there was a varied and complex pantheon of gods similar to other Indo-European religions of the time, with gods of nature, rather than followers praying to trees.
• Ascended Extra: Klinger started out as a one-shot guest character, and by the fourth season was a series regular.
  • Father Mulcahy, a minor character in the novel and film, initially only appeared every few episodes until he was made a regular.
• Ascended Meme: The cast frequently had William Christopher sound-alike contests between takes. In "Movie Tonight" everyone takes turns impersonating Father Mulcahy.
• Asian Baby Mama: Since the show was set during the Korean War this topic comes up a lot, with the different episodes varying on whether or not the American soldier father married the mother or not. In fact the episode Yessir, That's Our Baby is entirely dedicated to the hardships faced by the biracial children fathered by foreign soldiers who then either abandon the mother or get killed before they could marry them.
• Asians Eat Pets:
  • In one episode, Hawkeye is away from the camp and suffers a mild concussion. Taking refuge with a Korean family, he monologues non-stop in order to stay awake, as he knows falling asleep after the head injury is a bad idea. He has to talk to himself, as none of them speak English. At the end of the episode, he returns to their home to thank them. Joining them for a meal, the episode ends with this:
    Hawkeye: Dinner? Great! What's this? Meat? Where did you get meat? Wait a minute. Where's the dog? (dog barks offscreen, to Hawkeye's obvious relief)
  • In one episode, "Mad Dogs and Servicemen", Radar is bitten by a local dog that he'd been feeding on the sly. When Col. Blake points out that rabies is a very real concern, they try to find the animal to determine if it's rabid. But when they ask one Korean family about the dog, they say something in Korean which they quickly learn means "dog stew".
    Col. Blake: Radar, they took your dog home in a people bag!
• Asian Speekee Engrish: This was much more prelevant in the earlier episodes, where the humor was much more sitcomy and hadn't quite matured yet. A few specific examples:
  • "To Market, To Market" has Hawkeye and Trapper doing business with a black marketeer, whom they bring back to camp in the guise of an ROK General so he can see Henry's new desk for himself before deciding to seal a deal.
    "General" Lee: So very grand to meet you, Ker-ner Brake!
    • This is an Invoked Trope on Lee's part, as he's shown to have a fluent accent in the rest of the episode.
  • One of the P.A. announcers from the first season must have been a local working within camp (as was Ho-Jon), because we have some announcements that sound like this:
  "The Gree Crub wir meet in the Mess Tent at 18:00 hours. The first number on tonight's schedure is Father Murcahy's soro, 'I'm Confessin' That I Rove You.'"
  "Attention! Would Captain Jonathan S. Tuttre prease report to Ker-ner Henry Brake on the doubre!"
  • In an interesting inversion, the doctors have trouble understanding a local carrying a baby with her, asking for a, "Labbi fo' bliss," until Hawkeye examines a paper she has with her and realizes she's looking for a rabbi to perform a bris (circumcision).
  • Frank attempting to call Margaret on R&R in Tokyo apparently has problems with the operator mistaking the Hollywood Hotel for the Harrywood Hotel.
• Aside Glance: Ever not subtle, Hawkeye to Trapper/the camera after he makes a bisexuality joke with Tolstoy in “Love Story”.
• Ask a Stupid Question...:
  • Klinger enters Henry's office:
    Klinger: Are you in, sir?
    Henry: No! No, Klinger, this is a film of me!
  • From "The Novocaine Mutiny":
    Frank: (cowering in fear after hearing an explosion) Was that a bomb!?
    Hawkeye: No, Frank. Someone's playing their World War II album.
  • From "The Chosen People":
    Frank: Is that girl nursing a baby?
    Hawkeye: No, that's a child doing maternal chin-ups.
  • From "Deal Me Out":
  Radar: (to Henry) Did you cut yourself shaving, sir?
  Henry: No, Radar. I thought I'd wear three pieces of toilet paper tonight. Maybe I'll start a new trend.
  Radar: I don't think it'll ever catch on.
  • From "Fade In, Fade Out""
  Radar: Major Houlihan, is that you?
  Margaret: No, it's Amelia Earhart. Who do you think it is?
  • Later in the same episode:
    Winchester: Get me Tokyo General Hospital.
    Radar: On the phone?
    Winchester: No, open the window and yell.
• As Long as It Sounds Foreign:
  • Though Charles is certainly not a foreign character, David Ogden Stiers took this mindset somewhat for Charles's accent, reasoning that the accent would distinguish the character's aristocratic demeanor and upbringing.
  • With the Korean characters, on the other hand, that's an entirely different story. There are a number of cases where the characters don't even speak actual Korean, but instead are speaking Chinese. In fact, in two different episodes, the word "Stop" has a completely different translation ("Kuchio" in one episode, "Chung-ji" in another). In another, a Chinese soldier pulls a grenade in the OR and speaks Japanese.
    • The two different words for "stop" thing is actually a genuine attempt to avert this. Korean features a couple of different words that, in any dictionary, would be glossed as "stop". If the horrible pronunciation is ignored, we have "geuchyeo" (그쳐, the imperative form of 그치다) and "jeongji" (정지, a noun meaning "stop" or "arrest"). The camp's stop signs even feature a third word: "meomchum" (멈춤, a nominal form of 멈추다). In addition, it's the main characters attempting to use these words.
• Attending Your Own Funeral: Done twice, once when a Luxembourg officer is presumed dead, and again when Hawkeye is mistakenly declared dead by the army. The latter was a wake thrown as a joke.
• Attractive Bent-Gender: Averted with Klinger, although he had some fantastic legs.
• Author Appeal:
  • A lot of the more explicit “Hawkeye might be bi” references come from Alan Alda’s writing, like “I must be obvious or something” from Dr Pierce and Dr Hyde, or the winky “I loved as many of you as I could” in the finale, or “you’re all bent over/who told you?” from Hepatitis.
  • Both Hawkeye and Margaret had a lot of Casual Kink baked into them, but with his bratty masochistic streak (plus a tendency to make pregnancy jokes) and her being into dominating, it seems like some of the writers had a thing for dominatrixes. “Movie Tonight” has a scene where Hawkeye crawls out of the nurses’ tent, directly followed by Margaret in a short robe threatening Frank with a whip.
  • Everyone who gets a make-out scene in this camp seems obsessed with kissing or biting each other’s necks. Might be a way to compromise with the censors, or else they’re all secret vampires.
  • Like a lot of 70s shows, MASH had a thing for feet, mostly with Frank and Margaret, but even Mulcahy gets a little flirty when Hawkeye is inspecting him. As B.J. says on a Nurse Able: “if I wasn’t married, I’d start nibbling at her toes and wouldn’t stop until I got to her hairpins.”
  • Beyond character relevance of egotistical lack of self esteem, they really loved to make jokes about Hawkeye prostituting himself.
• Auto Erotica: The repressed married man himself, B.J. Hunnicutt, sure likes making jokes about having either Peg or Hawkeye in the backseat of a desoto.
• Awful Wedded Life: Hawkeye implies several times that his parents would really rather have not talked to each other, and that he came home to fights, but his dad still idealises his mom after her death anyway. Notably, they both were very kind to him, just not necessarily to each other.

  MP: Getting in isn’t the problem. Getting out is.

  Hawk: Sounds like marriage.

• Babies Make Everything Better:
  • Averted with Margaret, who at one point believes she's pregnant but says that a baby will only exacerbate the problems she's already having with her husband, not to mention end her Army career. It turns out she's not, but Margaret and Donald later divorce anyway.
  • Also averted in the finale, the staff is returning from visiting a beach for the 4th of July when they pick up some civilians and wounded soldiers. They stop to avoid an enemy patrol, and one of the civilians smothers her baby to stop it crying and giving the bus' position away.
• Badass Boast: The camp's slogan is, "Best Care Anywhere!" and they back it up with a 97% survival rate.
• Badass Preacher: Father Mulcahy, who seemed rather quiet, unassuming, and largely ineffective, was credited by many in the unit as being the driving force behind any sense of sanity or morality in the camp, frequently fit this trope.
  • First, he talked Klinger out of using a live grenade on Frank Burns.
  • He rdealt with the black market on a regular basis ("You'd be surprised what a priest can get away with") in order to get supplies for the local orphanages he worked with.
  • Mulcahy once performed an emergency tracheotomy under enemy fire.
  • Had a right hook had a right hook like a brick house.
  • Disarmed a private who pointed a rifle on him at point-blank range, and even walked up to the private to the point that the rifle was in direct contact with his chest.
  • During an annual April Fools spate of pranks and piratical jokes threatened to give Klinger the last rites and a few lefts when Klinger made a joke about someone switching his bathrobe for a woman's bathrobe.
  • When Greek and Turkish soliders started fighting in post-op, he gave both soliders a speech that Klinger termed to be from the "Book of Threats." It was enough to get the soldiers to stop fighting.
  • In the series finale "Goodbye, Farewell and Amen" Mulcahy ran to a POW compound under heavy shelling to free the prisoners who were sitting ducks. (This act seriously damaged his hearing. In the After Show AfterMASH Potter arranged for Mulcahy to undergo a new surgical procedure in Saint Louis that restored much of his hearing, but he was still rendered permanently deaf in one ear).
• Batman Gambit: Potter's April Fool's joke requires a visiting inspector, Col. Tucker, to enrage the doctors so much that they'd try to pull a major prank on him; then he'd lose his temper and fake a heart attack, making the doctors think they'd killed him. If they didn't try to prank Col. Tucker, the gag wouldn't work, but Potter knew they would.
  • Hawkeye's prank on the colonel is a Batman Gambit of its own: It requires knowing not only that the colonel would come to the Officers' Club that evening, not only what table he'd sit in, but which seat at that table he'd sit in.
• Batty Lip Burbling: The Grand Finale "Goodbye, Farewell and Amen" opens with Hawkeye in a psychiatric hospital. As he talks to the others over the phone, he jokes that he's getting a blister on his finger from burbling.
• Beat Without a "But": After a young visiting surgeon proves himself superior to the 4077th doctors, Hawkeye finds BJ sheepishly reading a medical journal out of fear they're losing touch, and tries reassuring him:
  Capt. Hawkeye Pierce: So he's younger than us. So he's up to date on all the latest medical techniques... (beat) ...so let me read that when you're done.
• Becoming the Mask: Klinger worries about this in Season 6's "War of Nerves", wondering if he's taken his Section 8 routine too far:
  Klinger: Well, I look at myself in the mirror lately, and I see this guy in earrings, pillbox hat, veil, maybe a little choker of pearls. And I ask myself "Would a sane man dress like this?" I'm tryin' to convince them, and I'm convincing myself.
• Beef Bandage: Trapper sports one in one of the very first episodes, "Requiem for a Lightweight".
• Benevolent Boss: Describes Henry, and especially Potter, who is even more tolerant of his subordinates' antics because he understands their need to blow off steam.
• Berserk Button:
  • Don't tell Hawkeye they're serving liver and fish in the mess tent yet again.
  • Don't even suggest that B.J. would ever cheat on his wife.
  • Whatever you do, don't ever, ever ever insult the state of Iowa within earshot of Radar.
  • Don't even think of telling latter-seasons Margaret that women aren't as tough/smart/worthy/whatever as men. Particularly don't suggest that she's somehow not a real major.
    • Point of fact, don't even think about evacuating the nurses for safety, even in an extreme crisis situation.
  • Don't insult people who stutter in front of Charles. Also don't sell the chocolate bars he donated to your orphanage on the black market. Unless you have a very good reason.
  • Don't talk about people eating horses in front of Potter.
  • Don't deny Father Mulcahy his promotion...four times. Don't insult the Irish. Don't interrupt his bath. Don't replace his bathrobe with a flowery nightgown. Don't steal from Hawkeye. Don't be Charles Winchester. Just...don't.
  • Don't you dare ruin one of Klinger's dresses.
• The Bet:
  • One episode features Hawkeye being wagered that he go an entire day without snarking. That day is filled with an absurd amount of things that a man can make wisecracks about. Finally, after keeping his mouth shut the entire day, Hawkeye finally lets it all out in a massive snark-fest over the PA at 12:01 AM the next day.
  • In another episode, Hawkeye bets that B.J. can't prank the entire main cast. He puts a snake in Charles' bed, shaving cream in Potter's toothpaste, cuts the back off of Margaret's bathrobe, poisons Mulcahy, and blows up Klinger's office. Hawkeye then spends the night outside in a barbwire enclosure. It's then revealed that everyone lied about the pranks/did it themselves, and it was all a Kansas City Shuffle, and Hawkeye was the real victim. Although he still didn't win the bet, because pranking just Hawkeye wasn't the bet.
  • During "The MASH Olympics" Hawkeye and B.J., the captains of the two teams, arrange a side bet that the losing captain will push the winning one around in a wheelchair for a week.
  • In the first "Dear Dad" episode, Hawkeye bets Trapper that he could walk into the mess tent wearing nothing but boots during lunch and no one would notice due to the general malaise about the camp. He almost manages it, but ultimately loses as one soldier finally looks up and notices him, then alerts everyone else by dropping his tray.
• Better than Sex:
  • In "Adam's Ribs", Hawkeye tries to get a case of barbecued pork ribs from a Chicago restaurant shipped to Korea. When Radar asks if these ribs are as good as Hawkeye says they are, Hawkeye answers, "Better than sex." Radar then grouses, "I wouldn't know how good that is, sir."
  • In "The Light That Failed", after B.J. finally lets a bored Hawkeye start reading the mystery novel Peg sent, Hawkeye declares that reading just might be better than sex.
    Charles: It certainly takes longer around here.
    B.J.: How would you know?
• Big Eater:
  • Hawkeye reminisces about once eating twelve banana sandwiches (and spending a week in the bathroom afterwards).
  • Any time a real meal is to be had in camp, Trapper somehow finds a way to eat the whole thing himself.
  • Radar especially, his heaping portions in the Mess Tent are often the butt of a joke. Hawkeye even suggests that their side could possibly win the war if Radar would simply eat North Korea.
    Klinger: How can you eat this slop?
    Radar: My mouth is tone-deaf.
  • Then there was the time Klinger tried to eat his way out of the Army, by getting so fat and out-of-shape that they'd have to discharge him. It didn't work.
  • He also tried to eat his way out of the Army by devouring a jeep. He managed to get down a windshield wiper, several bolts, and a horn button before his stomach decided no more.
• Big Storm Episode: "They Call The Wind Korea" is about the camp preparing for and dealing with the onslaught of a massive freezing windstorm.
• Bilingual Bonus:
  • Klinger's Arabic, while it doesn't sound specifically Lebanese, is pretty accurate (ironically, far more so than the Korean spoken on the show, which is usually not even Korean).
  • However, in the episode "Hawkeye", Korean is actually spoken by the family in whose house Hawkeye is staying. As Hawkeye is both the only main cast member and the only English-speaking character in the episode, Korean-speakers get to hear about twice as much dialog as English-only-speakers. Among the gems are the father telling Hawkeye to "Please shut up so we can eat dinner."
  • In the second scene of "Fade Out, Fade In - Part 1," Hawkeye spits game at a nurse in very good French.
• Bit Character: Most of the show's nurses and corpsmen are this.
• Bittersweet Ending: "Sometimes You Hear the Bullet," which also counts as the series' Wham Episode. Hawkeye's friend dies, which results in Hawkeye going back on a promise he made to an underage soldier to keep his secret and having him sent home, leaving them both bitter. In the end, however, Hawkeye manages to make it up to the kid by getting him a Purple Heart medal to show off to his girlfriend back home.
• Black Comedy:
  • Basically what the show is built on. Something as horrifying as war shouldn't be funny, but they make it so.
  • For as much drama as Hawkeye’s Trauma Conga Line was played for, there was often an element of sadist comedy to it. For example, he can never seem to go on R&R without either being so busy that he falls asleep, missing his chance, or his jeep stopping on the way and getting captured by a North Korean.
• Blackmail: Occasionally employed by Hawkeye and co. For instance, in "George" he and Trapper get Frank to admit to having paid for the answers on his medical exams, and then use the info to keep him from sending a letter to the Pentagon outing a gay GI and demanding he be dishonorably discharged.
  • In the episode where Hawkeye and B.J. get the portable bathtub, Charles offers to buy it off of them. When they refuse and even insist they won't let him use it, he threatens to tell the entire camp they have said bathtub. They cave in immediately.
• "Blackmail" Is Such an Ugly Word:
  • Used in "Hey, Doc", when Hawkeye and B.J. have Frank Burns sign off on fudging a medical profile in exchange for covering his ass regarding an accident with a tank.
    Margaret: They're blackmailing you, Frank.
    B.J.: "Blackmail" is an ugly word.
    Hawkeye: We prefer "extortion".
  • In "The Price", Klinger asks Col. Potter to name his price to give him the Section 8 discharge he wants.
    Potter: Oh, I see. Now it's bribery.
    Klinger: That's an ugly word for it, sir. Ugly, but fitting.
• Black Market: Figures in several episodes.
• Black Market Produce: The occasional real food is quite a treat. One time a farmer gives the unit a bunch of real eggs, not the reconstituted stuff they usually get. Another time Radar goes through a Chain of Deals in order to supply Col. Potter with fresh tomato juice after some accidentally got shipped to them and Potter liked it—but then after all that trouble, it turns out Potter is mildly allergic. He'd been without it for so long he forgot.
• Blatant Lies:
  • In order to get a new foot locker, Margaret shoots it with Charles's shotgun and claims that it was destroyed by enemy fire.
  • Frank got his black eye when he slipped on a bar of soap and hit his face on the sink. Hawkeye most definitely had not gotten fed up with Frank and belted him before bursting out in song.
  • Hawkeye sedated Frank by force and unlawfully took command of the 4077. Frank most definitely didn't concuss himself walking into a door and leave the others to fend for themselves.
  • Major Burns handles the most difficult cases, as Major Houlihan tells a visiting colonel. He most definitely doesn't get saddled with the least difficult cases on account of his incompetence.
• Bluffing the Murderer: Hawkeye exposes a thief by tricking him into a revealing giveaway.
• The Board Game: The show had one, made by Milton Bradley. Players would try to load a chopper with wounded and fly it to the pad via dice moves.
  • There was also a Licensed Game made for Atari and Coleco. It was not well received.
• Book Burning: Done by Frank in preparation of Gen. MacArthur's visit in "Big Mac".
  Frank: One of the greatest living Americans is coming and I'm not going to let him see some of the trash that's read around here.
  Trapper: Plato's Republic? The Life of Red Grange?
  Hawkeye: Revolutionaries.
  Frank: Right!
  Trapper: Robinson Crusoe?
  Hawkeye: Everybody runs around half-naked.
  Trapper: Norman Mailer?
  Frank: It's got *that word* in it.
• Book Ends: "A War for All Seasons" opens and closes with successive New Year's ceremonies at the 4077, complete with identical toasts given by Col. Potter.
  • At the beginning of the series, the words "Korea - A hundred years ago" appear onscreen. In the last standard episode of the series, the characters are burying a time capsule to be dug up in a hundred years.
• Boring, but Practical: An all-star Football player who loses a leg talks with Radar about how the team won a major victory against another team with superior defense: The short pass.
• Both Sides Have a Point: In “Fallen Idol”. Hawkeye messed up badly, and continually makes the wrong choices, but he’s not wrong complaining that Radar and the rest of the camp put him on a pedestal and seem to get tired of him easily when he’s actually in need of help.
• Bottle Episode: "O.R.", "The Bus", "Hawkeye", "A Night at Rosie's"
• The Boxing Episode:
  • "Requiem for a Lightweight" has Trapper John taking on the champ of the 8063rd, a heavyweight enlisted man.
  • In "End Run", Klinger and Zale are roped into a boxing match by Frank Burns.
• Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: Hawkeye has a talent for long lists with a suicide joke or a rape joke tucked in the middle or at the end, talking so fast that others don’t notice what he actually said until later on.
  Hawkeye, with his ex right there: It’s obvious that you’ve struck an officer, embezzled a company’s funds or ravaged a corpsman. Only creeps get sent to a MASH.
• Breakout Character: In Season 1, Klinger showed up in a few episodes as "the guy trying to get a Section 8 discharge"; by the end of the series, he was part of the main cast.
• Break the Haughty:
  • When they first meet, Col. Flagg condescendingly attempts to browbeat Col. Potter. Potter puts him in his place, and fast. Flagg never treats Potter with anything less than respect again.
    Flagg: I want a medical decision, and I want it now! The last C.O. they had here couldn't make a decision without a month's warning.
    Potter: I'm not fond of personal abuse, Flagg. I was in this man's Army when the only thumb you cared about was the one you had in your mouth.
  • According to Hawkeye, Winchester never was broken. However, he was in the final episode by the death of his prized Chinese musicians.
• Breakfast in Bed: In the ninth season episode "The Best of Enemies", Winchester is trying to entice B.J. to be his bridge partner (playing against Col. Potter and Margaret). B.J. sets as one of his conditions that Winchester serves him breakfast in bed. At the end of the episode, Winchester dumps the breakfast tray on B.J., and snarls, "I hope you gag on every bite."
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: The season 4 premiere "Welcome to Korea" ends with the P.A. announcer naming the new season's cast regulars as both actors and characters.
• Breather Episode: While it ends with the wounded coming in, “Movie Tonight” is one of the lighter Family of Choice episodes, with most of it dedicated to the whole cast goofing off, no Sanity Slippage or infidelity or anything.
• Brick Joke: In season 3 Henry Blake talks to Radar about having his tonsils removed, stating that they're "big as a baby's backside." In season 7 Radar's tonsils again come up and this time they are taken out.
  • The can of beans on the stove in season 4's "It Happened One Night".
  • Potter recounts how an old rival of his swallowed 23 goldfish to beat his record of 22. Later, it turns out Klinger is in reach of a pole-sitting record, but he's cold and wants to come down.
  Potter: I'll give you a choice. You can stay up there, or come down here and swallow 24 goldfish.
  Klinger: Did you say 24 goldfish, sir?
  Potter: The first 18 are easy.
• Briefer Than They Think: As mentioned above, you could fit three Korean Wars into the show's run.
• Broken Ace: Captain Newsome in "Heal Thyself". And Hawkeye in "Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen". Also Captain Chandler in "Quo Vadis, Captain Chandler".
• Broken Aesop:
  • In the episode "Images," The Stinger has Radar setting up a weight bar on two chairs to start working out. Potter tells him not to, because he would have to keep working out basically for the rest of his life, lest the muscles atrophy. So, it's bad to want to be physically fit and get into shape, even in the Army as a corpsman/stretcher bearer?
    • The whole of the episode involves Radar wanting to get a tattoo and the others telling him not to—not because the local tattoo artists aren't sterile, but because they think tattoos look dumb.
  • Even worse is the next episode, "MASH Olympics," where Potter is appalled that everyone is in such poor shape that several can't right an ambulance, yet four MPs can with ease.
    • Not only does it break the Aesop, it doesn't even make sense. The characters are established to work absurdly hard at highly physical duties, including carrying stretchers, for extremely long hours. If they aren't up to righting an ambulance, it's because they're tired, not out of shape.
  • There's the episode "Souvenirs," in which Hawkeye and B.J. force a chopper pilot to stop selling trinkets made out of junk found on battlefields. Granted that people, including little kids, are getting hurt and killed when they try to scavenge something that turns out to be booby-trapped, but this doesn't solve the problem. Fact #1: These people are dirt poor and desperate for every penny they can scrape up. Fact #2: Metal is valuable. Even if the souvenir industry dried up, the brass shells could be sold to someone who can use them, to melt down if nothing else. Fact #2 can't be changed. Fact #1 can, but Hawkeye and B.J. don't do anything about it. In fact, they put a guy out of business who gives fifty bucks to the family of one of his suppliers who got hurt. Nice move. He even mentions that his predecessor used to just send flowers. Those families are certainly better off with him gone.
• Bucket Booby-Trap: Frank rigs one for Hawkeye (yep, you read that right) in "Showtime", while Hawkeye himself does so for a visiting colonel in "April Fools".
• Buffy Speak: In a cold snap episode, Henry asks Radar to requisition, "Those nice wooly caps with the ear muffs, but in military talk."
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: No matter how madcap Hawkeye gets, his medical skills save him from court martial a few dozen times.
  • Klinger is trying to get a Section 8 discharge by crossdressing and generally acting insane. But he's too much of a professional to actually shirk his duty as a sentry or doing anything other than his utmost to help when the 4077 is inundated with wounded.
• Burma-Shave:
  • In "Deluge", B.J. responds to Hawkeye's comment that he knows a lot of poetry by joking that he "went to school on a scholarship from Burma-Shave".
  • In "C*A*V*E", Hawkeye tells Margaret not to drive their Jeep too fast as he wants to read the Burma-Shave signs.
  • In "Goodbye, Farewell and Amen", the camp rigs up a homemade sign to welcome Hawkeye back from his psychiatric treatment:
    Hawk was gone
    Now he's here
    Dance 'til dawn
    Give a cheer
    — Burma-Shave
• Burn Baby Burn: In "War of Nerves", psychiatrist Sidney Freedman convinces Col. Potter to let the camp make a bonfire, burning many non-essential items which represent the stifling Army lifestyle. "You have to let them go crazy once in a while to keep from going crazy." Freedman himself strips to his underwear and tosses his fatigues into the blaze.
• Bury Your Gays: Actually averted in the episode "George", although Weston was asking Hawkeye to clear him for further duty on the front, even if he wasn't physically fit, so how long he survived past the episode is anyone's guess.
• But Not Too Bi: As much (according to Alan Alda, intentional) coded jokes as they put in and flirting with other men as Hawkeye did, it’s a 70s show and they can’t be explicit, so from references and other characters’ reactions (exasperated or affectionate), he does a lot more offscreen.
• Butt-Monkey:
  • Frank Burns, who frequently gets comeuppance for being a jerkass. His replacement Charles Winchester is occasionally prone to this as well.
  • Henry Blake frequently experienced any number of Amusing Injuries and other mishaps.
  • Igor, who only serves the food and is in no way responsible for its quality but nonetheless takes a steady stream of verbal abuse over it. This on top of being on permanent KP.
    • If the episode "A War for All Seasons" is any indication of Igor's usual culinary efforts, then at least some of the abuse directed at him is very well deserved. Father Mulcahy spends most of the episode tending to a small cornfield he planted so he can treat the camp to corn on the cob during their Fourth of July celebration, but Igor ruins Mulcahy's efforts by instead serving creamed corn. He doesn't even seem to be aware that corn on the cob is a thing.
      B.J.: In a few minutes we're going to be de-cobbing corn, thanks to you and your khaki thumb.
      Mulcahy: Don't I know it. All week I've been dreaming of getting butter on my cheeks, juice on my shirt, and a niblet wedged between two molars.
      Mulcahy: (at the table Igor is serving) Where is the corn?
      Igor: You're looking at it. The mushy stuff.
      Mulcahy: You... You creamed it! (on the verge of tears) You... you ninny!
      Igor: (while everyone is yelling at him) I was just trying to be helpful! Next Fourth of July you can eat it on the cob for all I care!
• Call-Back:
  • In the season three episode "There is Nothing Like a Nurse", the subplot of an imminent paratrooper invasion has the camp on edge, fearing the worst (especially the nurses). At the end, the "invasion" turns out to be the return of Five o'clock Charlie, the heroically incompetent lone North Korean fighter pilot from season two.
  • In trying to make friends, Margaret in “Temporary Duty” offers B.J. and Winchester a talk over coffee, in a nod back to her “did you ever once offer me a lousy cup of coffee” speech of “The Nurses”.
• Calvin Ball: Double Cranko, a game invented by Hawkeye and B.J. which incorporates chess, checkers, poker, gin rummy, and booze.
  B.J.: You're cheating!
  Hawkeye: How can I cheat? There are no rules!
• Camp Cook: Igor Straminsky, although he wasn't the actual cook and would often remind those complaining to him of such.
• Canon Foreigner: A very large percentage of the regular and recurring characters on the show never appeared in the original novel or film, including the various replacements (B.J., Potter, Charles) as well as Klinger, Flagg, Sidney, Igor, Zale, Rizzo, etc.
• The Casanova: Hawkeye, particularly in the earlier seasons. Also Trapper.
  • It ultimately starts backfiring on Hawkeye in the later seasons, when every advance either ends in a strikeout, getting humiliated, or a disastrous date.
  • And, in the season 11 episode "Who Knew", Millie Carpenter has such a crush on him that she ends up wandering into a minefield.
  • Carlye Walton, nee Breslin, from season 5's "The More I See You", is Hawkeye's one true love that got away.
  • Season 6's "In Love and War" has him and a South Koren woman seriously falling for each other, only to have the war force them to separate.
• Cast Herd: In the early seasons, the show often tended to split into three of these: Hawkeye/Trapper, Henry/Radar, Frank/Margaret.
• Celebrity Lie: Subverted in "Major Topper". In a bragging and name-dropping contest, Charles claims to have had dinner with Audrey Hepburn, despite never having seen any of her movies. Hawkeye and B.J. refuse to believe him, until Charles produces a photograph (which is never shown to the viewers) to prove the veracity of his tale.
  • Played straight in "Bombshells", when Hawkeye and Charles start a rumor that Marilyn Monroe is going to visit the 4077th, and it snowballs until even Colonel Potter believes it and arranges a welcome ceremony for her.
• Celebrity Paradox: A minor case, but still noteworthy. One of the films shown to the camp on movie night was the 1945 musical State Fair, which features Harry Morgan (aka Colonel Potter) in a supporting role. Granted, he would have looked 30 years younger, but no one seems to note the similarity between their commanding officer and the character in the movie.
• Cerebus Retcon: While a few season 1-3 episodes implied Hawkeye had pre-existing trauma and/or mental illness, he was mostly alright, and had an alive sister and mother. Season Four started a running theme of people who he loved and Never Got to Say Goodbye to (Trapper, Carlye the first time, his mother, unknowingly sabotages a chance to say goodbye to Radar), he was nearly drowned at seven by a friend he loved too much to admit could hurt him, his mom died a few years later and Alan Alda has talked about how he didn’t actually change much throughout the series.
  Alan Alda: I don’t think Hawkeye changed much in the eleven years – I think we just know more about him and see through his behavior more. We see frailties and human flaws and characteristic ways of dealing with people that are not all that heroic but that make him a more rounded person.
• Cerebus Rollercoaster: Especially in the later seasons, it wasn't unusual for the show to shift on a dime between comedic and dramatic moods, sometimes even within the same episode.
• Cerebus Syndrome: The series began as a zany comedy much like the movie, and ended as a dramedy on the horror and pointlessness of war.
  • To elaborate more on this: the movie was a dark/black comedy and a biting antiwar satire that would have had to be toned down for television anyway. At the same time, however, co-creators/producers Larry Gelbart and Gene Reynolds wanted to avoid the show being, "Just another sitcom," from the get-go. A lot of the show's zany tone and almost Hogan's Heroes-esque war hijinks humor in its earliest seasons were mostly the case of Executive Meddling wanting the show to avoid becoming too gory or too dark. It wasn't until Wham Episodes such as "Sometimes You Hear the Bullet" and "Abyssinia, Henry" went over well, and the show began to establish itself in the ratings, that Executive Meddling was toned down, and the producers and writers were given more freedom to do as they wished, such as give the show more of a dramatic undertone. Even with the eventual departures of Gelbart and later Reynolds, comedy was still the show's main focal point, with drama taking a back seat - though the humor itself was also toned down, and became more intelligent and cerebral, as opposed to silly and slapstick. Finally, by Season Eight, the entire writing and producing staff was overhauled by Alan Alda and Burt Metcalfe, causing the show to flip its priorities, and make drama the show's driving force with comedy shunted to the back burner.
• Chain of Deals: Happens in "For Want of a Boot" and "The Price of Tomato Juice."
• The Chains of Commanding:
  • While Henry would regularly be a pretty lax boss, it is clear that leading the unit, deciding that a soldier is too injured to save given the limited available time and resources during a rush of wounded, getting Hawkeye through the loss of a close friend, and other moments, do wear on him over the series.
  • Potter seems to keep things better, but there are episodes which show how deep inside he hates the job he is now in and the duties and obligations that come with it. From learning the enemy has a new weapon and the new means of treating the wounds, to having to end old friendships when those friends try to lead in the field and end up getting more young soldiers hurt because of their incompetence.
  • When Pierce is made Commanding Officer in season 7's opener "Commander Pierce" showed his handling of matters, the fighting of bureaucracy to just get blankets for the wounded, and in addition to his duties as Chief Surgeon. When B.J. leaves without informing him to help an aide station, it leaves Pierce with just him and an ill Charles to work as the surgeons before a large rush of wounded are about to arrive. After it is over, Pierce talks with Houlihan and the following conversation follows:
    Hawkeye: Damn that Hunnicutt! Where is he? Technically, he's AWOL, y'know. I could throw the book at him.
    Maj. Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan: I don't believe what I'm hearing! Since when did you join the Army?
    Hawkeye: Since it was left to me!
    Maj. Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan: If only Frank Burns could see you now. It's not so easy to be the clown when you have to run the circus, is it?
    Hawkeye: You finished, Major?
    Maj. Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan: Just one more thing... permission to say, 'it serves you right, sir!'
    Hawkeye: Permission denied, dismissed!
• Change the Uncomfortable Subject: In "The Bus", when everyone is talking about their first love, Hawkeye avoids the subject like the plague. As we find out in both "The More I See You" and "Bless You, Hawkeye", he doesn’t exactly have the best of luck in that area.
• Character as Himself: "Tuttle" has its title character billed this way.
• Character Focus: Numerous times, generally at least once a season.
• Characterization Marches On:
  • Radar starts out in the first season as sneaky and hypercompetent, is often seen smoking Blake's cigars and drinking his booze, and is implied to have long ago lost his virginity. By Season 3, he's incredibly naïve, doesn't smoke, doesn't drink much, and seems to have regained his virginity. (This actually gets lampshaded by Sidney as being Radar's defense mechanism for dealing with the war: reverting to more childish characteristics to escape the horrors forced on him everyday.) According to Gary Burghoff, the Real Life reason for this was that Burghoff and Larry Gelbart both realized that one more worldly-wise character in a cast full of them wasn't all that interesting, and decided Radar might work better as a more innocent foil to the rest of the camp.
  • Frank fell victim to Flanderization (see below); however, one facet of his character was that Frank wasn't completely against Koreans to begin with. In the pilot, he bemoans Hawkeye and Trapper's "corruption" of Ho-Jon, while in "I Hate a Mystery" he seems sympathetic when it's revealed Ho-Jon has been stealing everyone's belongings to sell for bribe money so the border guards will let his family come down from North Korea. In "Germ Warfare" he ends up befriending a North Korean POW enough to play checkers with him. He once even implies that he has his own personal Korean houseboy, whom he pays six cigarettes a day to keep his boots shined at all times. With each passing season, however, Frank's disdain toward Koreans (and all foreigners) increases more and more, to the point that he doesn't even like a South Korean ping-pong player (who was actually assigned to the 4077th) simply for being Oriental, and disapproves of his wedding to his fiancée because the Army shouldn't be concerned and tries to attack a South Korean general, mistaking him for a North Korean.
  • In spite of Henry's signature outfit consisting of a fishing hat and vest, he was really only a fishing aficionado throughout the first season; afterwards, golf was his activity of choice.
• Cheer Them Up with Laughter: In "Major Fred C. Dobbs", Frank Burns misses a shrapnel fragment while operating on a patient and then proceeds to not only blame Nurse Ginger but also berate her. To cheer her up, Hawkeye and Trapper play a cruel but hilarious prank on him.
• Christmas Episode: Somehow they had four of these, although there were only three Christmases during the war.
  • "Dear Dad" (Season 1), "Dear Sis" (Season 7), "Death Takes a Holiday" (Season 9), "'Twas the Day After Christmas" (Season 10).
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome:
  • Spearchucker (dropped from the series after the makers learned that there's no evidence that any black doctors served in Korea^note The creators were mistaken on there being a lack of black doctors during the Korean War. From the memoirs of Harold Secor, an online memoir of a doctor from the 8055th MASH unit (the same one as Richard Hooker): "In Secor's quarters, there was...Captain Miles, a black doctor from Virginia...." Richard Hooker arrived near the end of Harold Secor's stay at the 8055th and based many of the stories that appear in the book off stories he heard from Secor and others. For more information search the Memoirs of Harold Secor.), Lt. Dish, Boone, Ugly John, Capt. Spalding, Nurse Ginger, Sgt. Zale.
• Cigar Chomper: Trapper, Blake, Potter, Klinger, Zale, and Rizzo could all be seen enjoying the occasional stogie. Not to mention various visiting generals, colonels, etc. Even Radar was seen enjoying Blake's cigars from time to time in the first season or two.
• Clark Kenting: In "The Abduction of Margaret Houlihan," Col. Flagg arrives incognito as an Italian officer. Both Radar and Col. Potter know right away it's Flagg.
• Class Clown: Often Hawkeye will act extra wacky and Groucho Marx-ish to cheer up the soldiers and Koreans (who can’t understand what he’s saying, but appreciate the physical comedy) in Post-Op.
• Claustrophobia: Hawkeye, in "C*A*V*E".
• Clip Show: "Our Finest Hour".
  • The tag of "Abyssinia, Henry" features a Really Dead Montage of Henry clips, set to a bittersweet rendition of the theme entitled "Memories of Henry". It ends, fittingly, with Henry at a poker game folding his hand.
• Clock Discrepancy:
  • In "Five O'Clock Charlie," Hawkeye and Trapper turn the clock back a half hour, just before Charlie is about to make his appearance, and inform Frank about a patient's (staged) infection so Frank can't operate a gun to bring down Charlie.
  • In "Death Takes a Holiday", a soldier who they're trying to keep alive through December 25th (so his kids don't have to remember Christmas as "the day Daddy died") dies at about 11:35 pm. Hawkeye moves the hands of the clock so that it's 12:10 am, saying "Hey, look, he made it." They falsify the death certificate.
• Clown Car: Invoked in one episode, Hawkeye tries to break the record for the most people stuffed into a Jeep (16) after seeing a picture in Life magazine of a bunch of college kids doing it in a Volkswagen.
• Clueless Boss: Col. Henry Blake was the commanding officer in the first three seasons, but he relied heavily on his assistant Radar O'Reilly to do most of the work and was often oblivious to the goings-on around the base.
• Cold Snap: "The Longjohn Flap" (Season 1), "For Want of a Boot" and "Crisis" (both Season 2), "It Happened One Night" (Season 4), "Dear Sigmund" (Season 5), "The Light that Failed" (Season 6), "They Call the Wind Korea", "Baby It's Cold Outside", and "Out of Gas" (all Season 7).
• Color Me Black: In one episode, Hawkeye and Trapper gradually darken the skin of a white racist to make him think he's turning black after getting a blood transfusion from a black person, an in-universe exploitation of said soldier failing biology forever. The plot is somewhat inspired by a season one episode of All in the Family.
• The Comedy Drop: In one episode, Potter is having to take a driving test, and narrowly avoids hitting Klinger. Rizzo and Potter go to check on Klinger, and begin lifting him up, Potter lamenting that he's failed the driving test. Rizzo tells him "Far from it!". He and Potter both drop Klinger to the ground with a thud as Rizzo explains that Potter's quick reflexes in avoiding a pedestrian demonstrate exemplary driving skills, and crates never have the right of way. Potter isn't fooled for a second, but accepts the excuse to pass.
• Comfort Food: In the episode "Adam's Ribs", Hawkeye goes out of his way to order and have delivered to the 4077th (which is in Korea, remember, in the middle of a war zone) 40 pounds of ribs (plus sauce) from a restaurant called Adam's Ribs in Chicago, Illinois. And why did he go to such trouble? Because he was sick of army food and Adam's Ribs was the best food he could think of.
  • In another episode the surgeons are attempting to build a makeshift dialysis machine, for which they need sausage casings as a filter. Klinger manages to hook them up via his favorite hot dog vendor in Toledo...then places a delivery order for the team to celebrate their success.
  • Averted when Father Mulcahy contributes fresh corn on the cob from his vegetable garden to the camp's 4th of July picnic, thinking the change of pace would be appreciated...only to learn that the cook prepared it as the usual creamed corn instead thinking the camp preferred creamed corn.
• Comic-Book Time: The series lasted for eleven seasons. The Korean War lasted three years. Technically, the series begins at least three months into the war, so the entire series covers the events of about two years and nine months. Potter's granddaughter is born in Season 4; one season later, she's five years old and writing him letters. The show has more Christmas episodes than there were actual Christmases during the war and the actors visibly age, both of which are ignored throughout the series.
• Comically Missing the Point: In the finale, Sidney reminds Hawkeye that the night before he was hospitalized, he drove a jeep though the wall of the Officer's Club and ordered a double bourbon. Hawkeye's reply?
  Hawkeye: That was strange. [Beat] I drink martinis.
• Composite Character: As with the movie, Frank Burns is a composite of Captain Frank Burns (arrogant but incompetent, deaths are "God's Will" or someone else's fault) and Major Jonathan Hobson (constant prayer and preachiness) from the original novel.
• Communications Officer: Radar (later Klinger, after Radar is sent home) is usually called upon to operate the communications equipment. Almost everyone else has trouble getting the stuff to work properly.
• Compressed Abstinence:
  • Hawkeye once takes a bet from B.J. that he can go a whole 24 hours without making a joke. He barely makes it.
  • Hawkeye also once pledges to give up drinking for a week. After a rough session in the OR on the seventh day, he joins the rest of the staff in the Officers Club and orders a martini.
    Hawkeye: Yes! I admit it! I need this drink! [Beat] I'll be back when I want it, not when I need it.
• Confess in Confidence: There are at least three episodes where Father Mulcahy learns of an issue from a confessing soldier and has to figure out how to solve it without breaking the seal of the confessional. One involves a black marketeer who has stolen critically needed medical supplies, one a soldier who swapped dog tags with a friend who died just before the end of his tour of duty, and one, a new doctor who confesses that he's been pretending to be a doctor to get officers' privileges and rank.
  • In one episode a solder who shot himself to get sent home confesses to Frank, mistaking him for a priest while he was in Father Mulcahy's tent to leave him a note.
  Trapper: You can fool some of the Papal some of the time...
  • Also note that in the case of the dogtags, Mulcahy was not technically bound by the seal of the confessional. As he says himself, the soldier is virtually unrepentant and has no intention of stopping his sin. Not simply turning him in and searching for another solution was more a matter of doing what was best for the soldier than breaking his own priest's vows.
• Conservation of Competence: At least, until Colonel Potter shows up.
• Contagious Laughter: Once Frank tried to join in when Blake was talking about what kidders the men were.
• Continuity Drift: A fair amount in the early seasons. Hawkeye signs a letter "love to Mom" but it's later revealed that his mother is dead; the writers couldn't keep the name of Henry's wife straight; at one point Margaret states her father is dead, but he shows up alive and well on an episode years later. Granted, Margaret is very drunk when she says it, but one would still expect her to remember which of her parents are living. Frank earlier asked if her father had left her some money, implying that Frank thought he was dead before her drunk reference to his death.
  • Hawkeye initially has a sister, too. And he was originally from Vermont, but is later from Maine. In one episode, he says that his family lives in Vermont and has a summer home in Maine, but this is dropped in favor of making Hawkeye a Maine native.
    • And for some reason he went to a dentist in Detroit (which might be an oblique reference to Painless, who was from Detroit). Not to mention his obsession in one episode with getting barbequed spareribs from his favorite restaurant in Chicago.
  • Potter originally has a son. Later, he has only a daughter. When his daughter-in-law gave birth, she originally had a daughter. Later, Potter has a grandson, but no granddaughter is mentioned. Also, depending on the episode, Potter was 15 when he joined the Army. At other times, he was already married by the time he joined the Army.
    • Potter could conceivably have been married at the age of 15; the legal age of consent didn't reach 16 in most states until 1920, and though a teenage marriage might have been unusual in the 1910s it wouldn't have been unheard of. He may even have joined the Army to support a young family at the time.
    • Potter mentions he joined when the US entered the First World War, but later gives his age as 62, putting his date of birth in 1889 or 1890, which would make him 27 when the US entered the war.
  • Moreover, the show's timeline is all over the place. Potter is introduced taking command of the unit in September of 1952, but later episodes have him present in 1951 or even '50. Eisenhower is president in Season 4 ("Dear Ma"), but in Season 10 it's somehow Truman again ("Give 'Em Hell, Hawkeye").
• Continuity Nod: Despite the above, the show does make numerous references to previous episodes and seasons:
  • Arterial transplants, which Hawkeye performs for the first time in one of the early episodes, are performed regularly after that. Margaret even points out that she assisted when Dr. Borelli taught him the procedure.
  • In "Welcome to Korea", Hawkeye (in his own words) passes onto B.J. the advice Trapper gave to him in "Dr. Pierce and Dr Hyde", which is basically “do your job and repress like the dickens”.
  • "The Late Captain Pierce" has Hawkeye reference how Trapper went home and Henry was killed. In "Depressing News" he again mentions these, as well as Frank's departure.
  • Frank is mentioned several times after his departure, mainly in reference to Margaret's Character Development.
  • The time capsule episode mentioned several characters who had departed, including Henry and Radar (they included a fishing hook and teddy bear to symbolize both men) and Frank (they referenced his lack of surgical skill by claiming that his scalpel was a deadly weapon).
  • In "The Joker Is Wild", B.J.'s prank war against Hawkeye is inspired by the latter's reference to Trapper having been the best joker to ever be in the 4077.
  • The staff get a letter from Radar in Iowa (and Potter subsequently talks to his mother on the phone) in "The Foresight Saga".
  • The vascular clamps that the doctors develop are referenced in several other episodes.
  • Klinger's crossdressing is mentioned several times after he gives up the act, including him signing a portrait of himself dressed as Scarlett O'Hara for B.J. in the finale.
  • The promotions for Klinger and Mulcahy (to Sergeant and Captain, respectively) maintain through the rest of the series.
  • The resolution of "Henry in Love" involves Henry talking to his wife on the phone, and her wanting him to balance her checkbook. A few episodes later there's a mail call episode, and the documents arrive for him to do it.
  • In season 3's "Checkup", Henry informs Radar that he's going to have his tonsils removed eventually; it finally happens in season 7's "None Like It Hot".
  • In season 7's "Rally 'Round the Flagg, Boys", while explaining his dislike of Col. Flagg to Charles, Hawkeye says he's "never been too fond of a guy who would bring you a wounded prisoner and beg you to fix him up just so he could take him out and shoot him", referencing Flagg's appearance in season 3's "Officer of the Day".
  • While packing his things in preparation of going home in season 8, Radar finds the thermometer that Col. Blake had given him (in "Abyssinia, Henry"). He also finds his Purple Heart and comments on how Hawkeye had saluted him (in "Fallen Idol").
  • Radar, Henry, and Trapper are all mentioned in "Period of Adjustment".
  • In "That's Show Biz", Brandy mentions that she was once married for three months. Margaret comments that her own marriage ("Margaret's Marriage" through "Peace On Us") was about the same duration.
  • The series finale, "Goodbye, Farewell and Amen", has several of them:
    • Hawkeye attempts to compose a "Dear Dad" letter while at the psychiatric hospital.
    • Hawkeye laments that B.J. went home without leaving him a note, just as Trapper had done.
    • Margaret and Charles re-hash an old argument (from season 6's "War of Nerves") over whether or not he touched his nose in surgery.
    • Sidney references an earlier comment he had made (in season 3's "O.R.") with his parting words to the group.
    • When saying goodbye to Hawkeye and B.J., Col. Potter mentions their pantsing of Winchester in the O.R. (from season 9's "Bottom's Up").
    • Saying goodbye to B.J., Hawkeye says he'll think of him "next time somebody nails my shoe to the floor" (something B.J. did earlier that season, in "The Joker Is Wild").
• Contrived Coincidence: Trapper and B.J. get caught up with the universe making Hawkeye a Cosmic Plaything, as Trapper gets his orders to leave while Hawkeye is on a particularly hedonistic R+R, can’t get through to him and is on an early flight so Hawkeye misses him by ten minutes. B.J. gets his orders while Hawkeye is an asylum, accidentally triggers him when he mentions Erin, and can’t leave him a note because his chopper is due to go in five minutes. While he has to come back, leaves a “note” in stones and Hawkeye gets the goodbye he needs, B.J. gives him extra reassurance that they’ll meet up in the states, but for some reason decides to say that while choppers are going on and Hawkeye can’t hear him.
• Contrived Clumsiness:
  • On one episode where Hawkeye, B.J. and Charles are on a promotion committee, they evaluate the prospective promotees and give their recommendations. In The Stinger, after commenting on wondering who was promoted, Private Igor, who works in the mess tent chow line and was not promoted, tosses a scoopful of mashed potatoes on B.J. "Oh, I'm sorry. But what do you expect from a dumb private?"
  • A flashback in one episode showed Father Mulcahy "accidentally" tucking a tablecloth into his belt and ruining the meal of a visiting general who was causing a holdup in the mess tent.
• Contrasting Replacement Character: Every replacement surgeon.
  • Henry Blake was the commanding officer and The Alleged Boss who both Trapper and Hawkeye would go around his orders and who Burns and Hotlips had no respect for. The Korean War was also his first war and he wasn't that very militant. In contrast, Sherman Potter was a regular Army Man who was part of two previous wars. He also commanded much more respect from the other staffs and wasn't afraid to actually command (though like Blake, he was often willing to overlook the pranks and insanity, acknowledging their need to blow off steam).
  • Frank Burns was a Jerkass whose surgery skills were subpar at best. He was also bullied by Hawkeye and Trapper and later B.J.. His replacement, Charles Winchester, was more of a Jerk with a Heart of Gold and was a excellent surgeon (his only real issue, at least at first, is his fastidiousness slowing him down in an arena where speed is often key). His relationship with Hawkeye and B.J. was also slightly better and he wasn't above playing pranks.
  • B.J. Hunnicutt is a downplayed example for Trapper John as he functioned very similarly to him. However, B.J. was a family man who loved his wife Peg to the point that he felt ashamed that he cheated on her. In contrast, Trapper constantly cheated on his wife with zero regret for his actions. There was also a contrast in morals. One episode during B.J.'s tenure recycled a plot from an earlier episode with Trapper. Hawkeye wants to perform unneccessary surgery to keep a particularly callous officer off the front for a little while longer. Trapper had gone along with that plan with no problem, but B.J. considers it a horrific violation of the Hippocratic Oath. This severely strains Hawkeye and B.J.'s friendship (and was based on Alan Alda and Mike Farrell's argument about it).
• Control Freak: Frank Burns, and to a lesser extent Hot Lips.
• Cool Old Guy: You wish Colonel Potter was your grandfather, admit it.
• Corrective Lecture: At one point, after one of Klinger's latest attempts to garner himself a Section 8 and a trip home, Col. Potter pulls him aside and gives him a mildly reprimanding lecture.
  Col. Potter: None of us wants to be here. I don't wanna be here. Radar doesn't want to be here. The doctors, the nurses. Certainly the wounded don't want to be here. But we've got to do our best. Understand, son?
• Corrupt Quartermaster: In "The Incubator", Hawkeye and Trapper John run into one of these, who is hoarding several of the incubators that they need, but refuses to release one. In another episode, Klinger gets a quartermaster to sell him an electrical generator because the camp's main generator is broken and the backup one is missing. Just before they complete the deal, the major of the unit which is supposed to get the generator shows up in person because several of their requests for generators have "mysteriously disappeared." The major even mentions that they're making do with a backup generator they stole from a M*A*S*H unit.
• Courtroom Episode: "The Trial of Henry Blake", "The Novocaine Mutiny", "Snappier Judgment", coupled with Court-martialed
• Court-martialed:
  • "The Novocaine Mutiny": Pierce is on the receiving end of a hearing instigated by Burns.^note Not an actual court martial; it's a preliminary hearing to determine whether to recommend charges The events of Burns' short tenure as a commanding officer are rehashed in flashbacks. Burns' embellished version ultimately charges Pierce with assaulting the CO. After hearing both sides, the court finds Pierce innocent and otherwise preserves the status quo.
  • In "Snap Judgement", the 4077 suffers from elusive thieves and a Polaroid camera goes missing. Continuing in "Snappier Judgment," Klinger, who bought the camera back from black market peddlers, because the Army didn't believe his explanation for how he got it or why he delayed reporting it stolen, is arrested by military police and court-martialed for the theft instead. Winchester volunteers to be his legal counsel, while Hawkeye and B.J. set out to catch the culprit. Because of Winchester's ineptitude in law and the unfortunate circumstances, Klinger is just about to be convicted when the real thief is brought into the court, absolving Klinger of the charges.
  • "The General Flipped At Dawn" had a preliminary to a court-martial against Hawkeye for insubordination, until General Steele (who initiated the preliminary) proved to be nuttier than a fruitcake.
  • "The Trial of Henry Blake", as mentioned above.
  • "House Arrest" has Hawkeye confined to quarters pending a court martial for punching Burns, but never gets that far.
  • "Iron Guts Kelly" was a visiting general who dies while making out with Margaret. His attache wants to fudge the cause of death and expects Hawkeye and Trapper to facilitate it. When they refuse, the attache threatens them with a court martial. They counter:
  Trapper: We'll be the ones with our hand on the Bible.
• Covered in Mud: In the episode which introduces new doctor B.J. Hunnicutt, before he even gets to the unit he, Hawkeye and Radar get caught in a bombing raid by the North Koreans along with some GIs. As he runs from one wounded soldier to another he slips and falls into some mud, ruining his dress uniform.
  • The "Bulletin Board" episode has a scene of everyone having a tug-of-war over a mud puddle during the camp picnic; needless to say, they all end up like this.
  • When the camp is pinned down by a sniper, one soldier ends up slipping on the mud and belly-flopping into a puddle of it.
• Cringe Comedy: Margaret trying her best to fall in love with Hawkeye in “Comrade In Arms part two”, much to his discomfort. While it’s in character for her, he’s almost glad when they start arguing again.
• Critical Staffing Shortage:
  • On a couple of occasions the nurses are all shipped off because of a potential bombing (or other) attack by North Koreans, so the doctors and enlisted personnel have to do all the stuff the nurses usually do. At one point even a civilian bartender gets roped into nurse duty during an operation.
  • Another time, due to a flu epidemic, Hawkeye is the only doctor who isn't bedridden. He has to jump from operating table to operating table doing bits of surgeries while the nurses help much more than usual and Radar is dragooned into assisting. Margaret pretty much performs an operation all by herself, but not without a lot of coaching and encouragement from Hawkeye.
• Crossover: One of the odder examples. Larry Linville and Loretta Swit appear in character as Frank and Hot Lips in a 1975 Don Rickles variety special, helping perform a musical number called "I'm a Nice Guy."
  • McLean Stevenson famously did a cameo on The Cher Show as Henry Blake after "Abyssinia, Henry" aired, sitting in a smoking rubber raft and yelling, "I'm okay!". It can be viewed here. Over the years, people misremembered the show as The Carol Burnett Show. The story of the clip can be found here.
• Cross-Referenced Titles: The Season 10 episodes "Snap Judgment" and "Snappier Judgment", which aired back to back and have the latter continuing a storyline begun in the former.
• Crossword Puzzle: The central MacGuffin of the episode "38 Across", as the characters struggle to solve a New York Times crossword puzzle. However, the episode seems to have been written by someone who has never seen an actual New York Times crossword puzzle, as there is no way for anyone to be missing just one word – all letters in the NYT crossword are used in exactly two words. If they are missing a 5-letter-word beginning with V (which is "vantz"), then they are also missing one letter from exactly four other words.
• Cruel to Be Kind: A soldier comes in with hysterical paralysis, meaning he's physically fine, but his brain has tricked him into thinking he can't walk as a reaction to the horror of war. Hawkeye, as prescribed by Sidney Freedman, treats him harshly, refusing to give any sympathy, because otherwise the guilt would just make it worse and he'd become paralyzed permanently. By the end of the episode, he's walking.
• Cruel Twist Ending: "Abyssinia, Henry". Early in the episode, Radar cheerfully announces during an O.R. session that Col. Blake has earned enough points to be sent home from Korea. The rest of the episode deals with the entire camp giving him a celebratory sendoff. Many happy tearful goodbyes are made as Col. Blake departs the camp. In the very last scene, Radar again enters the O.R., this time to announce that he just received a message: "Lieutenant Colonel Henry Blake's plane was shot down, over the sea of Japan. It spun in. There were no survivors."
• Crushing Handshake:
  • During the M*A*S*H Olympics, Hawkeye and B.J. make a wager with each other, but when they shake on it, B.J. jokingly tries to crush Hawkeye's hand.
  • Trapper is afraid of this in the Boxing Episode, after learning that his opponent once punched out a Jeep.
  • Frank tackles a visiting South Korean general in the mess tent, mistaking him for a North Korean. After learning what he's done, he apologetically offers his hand to the general...and gets a variation, the general putting his hand in a painful grappling hold.
• Crying Wolf: This finally comes back to bite Klinger when he gets a "Dear John" Letter from his wife. It doesn't help that he has used this exact scam before. By then, everyone is understandably bored of it and don't feel like humoring him when they're trying to watch a movie.
  • Another time, in "Red and White Blues," Klinger comes down with severe anaemia and everyone is convinced that it's another of his malinger scams. Only when others develop similar symptoms do they realize Klinger is having a severe reaction to a new anti-malaria drug which was later found to hit people from the Mediterranean region hard with such a side effect.
• Cuckold:
  • In an episode there's a threat of an air raid so the nurses are sent away. It turns out it's just a "propaganda bomb," with leaflets dropped including "Harry S. Truman is sleeping with your wife."
  • In other episodes it's played more dramatically (if hypocritically) as Henry, Trapper, Frank, and some of the other married personnel worry that their wives are cheating on them back home, even as they carry on their own dalliances at the 4077th. An unmade episode reveals Frank's wife was cheating on him with a state senator, but the canonicity of this is debatable. From the pilot:
    Trapper: (reading mail) Bad news from my wife. She still loves me. Can you believe this? She still thinks I got sent to Korea as some secret plot to cheat on her.
    Hawkeye: Well, didn't you?
    Trapper: Yeah. But how'd she figure it out?
• Cue Card Pause: In "The Army-Navy Game".
• Cue the Rain: "Deluge".
• Curb-Stomp Battle: In the “Most Unforgettable Characters”, B.J. teases that nobody would believe he couldn’t take a noodle like Hawkeye out with one punch. “Period Of Adjustment” shows he’s not wrong.
• Cut Himself Shaving: Hawkeye likes to sarcastically explain patients' "trivial" injuries.
  • Notably used by B.J. in "The Abduction of Margaret Houlihan" when Flagg is asking about the bullet wound in his foot.

D-F

• Darker and Edgier: While the show is nicer and more Family of Choice than the books and movie, without a Laugh Track (like the creators wanted), the characters seem a lot more tired from the beginning (and everyone already assumes Hawkeye’s Sanity Slippage will get him into trouble), and Margaret getting attacked is scary in a different way. On the plus side, Klinger can get treated decently for his crossdressing and Hawkeye can say guys are cute without an audience cackling every time.
• Dartboard of Hate: B.J. and Klinger make one with Radar's face in "Period of Adjustment".
• Dated History: In one episode, after putting makeup on a racist man and telling him he was turning black after receiving a blood transfusion from a black donor, Hawkeye notes Dr. Charles Drew, innovator in how blood transfusions are stored and transported, had recently died after being refused admittance to a whites-only hospital due to the colour of his skin. This was a common assumption at the time (and the show certainly helped spread the idea), but in reality Dr. Drew was actually admitted to the Alamance Greater Hospital in Burlington, North Carolina, and died because his injuries were so severe there was nothing that could have saved him, as confirmed by a passenger in his car, John Ford, who also stated a blood transfusion would have likely killed Dr. Drew sooner due to shock.
• Day in the Life: The "letter home" episodes.
• Deadpan Snarker: Literally half the cast. Hawkeye moves between this and the Pungeon Master. Charles has this as his default setting.
• "Dear John" Letter:
  • The eponymous chopper pilot in "Cowboy" gets one of these addressed from Reno (at the time Nevada processed almost half the country's divorces). Subverted in that although it's a "Dear John" letter from Reno, his name actually is John and he actually lives in Reno back home. The letter tells him how his wife was tempted to an affair, but didn't go through with it and loves him even more.
  • Radar gets a "Dear John" record from his hometown girlfriend in "Love Story", complete with her new boyfriend saying hi and her telling him to stop groping her.
  • Klinger gets one from his wife in "Mail Call Three", launching his Character Development from comedy relief into a more serious (and more reliable) member of the team. When the rest of the camp thinks it's another Section 8 attempt, he has a Heroic BSoD where (among other things) he tears off his dress publicly.
  • In "Hanky Panky", B.J. comforts a nurse after she gets one of these, leading to a one-night stand between them and the Happily Married B.J.'s subsequent guilt over his infidelity.
• Death by Ambulance: In "Dear Sigmund", Col. Potter has to write a letter to the parents of an ambulance driver who was killed when he overturned the ambulance while driving at unsafe speeds. He turns the duty over to Radar, who writes a touching letter about how their son died trying to save others' lives.
• Death of the Author: In-Universe, during the "Dramatic M*A*S*H" phase; in one episode, the whole camp becomes infatuated when a mystery novel, "The Rooster Crowed at Midnight", is accidentally shipped to their camp. But it's damaged, and missing the last few pages (B.J. ripping out pages so others could read probably didn't help). So, they finally resort to phoning the (apparently senile) author and hearing her answer to Whodunnit?. Minutes before the episode ends, Colonel Potter gets on the loudspeaker and announces to the whole camp that the person that the author named as the culprit couldn't be responsible, because he had an alibi, leaving the whole camp no better off than they were before.
• Deconstructed Trope: Of Really Gets Around with Hawkeye and Margaret. While they both also enjoy sex, he makes jokes about having got started way too young which others are always disgusted by, one episode has the nurses being bored of him and his reputation, and his abandonment issues make him think this is one of the only things he’s good for. As for Margaret, it takes her a while to admit to liking sex, gets extorted more than once and admits to Potter that she uses men as a distraction.
• Deconstruction:
  • Fallen Idol was apparently written by Alan Alda because he wanted to see what fall out would happen if one of the main characters who drank regularly, had too much and couldn’t operate.
  • Fittingly for Alan Alda’s first depressing episode, “Dr Pierce and Dr Hyde” forms Hawkeye for the rest of the series. He’s not just a cute anti-war charmer who bad things happen to, he’s a Martyr Without a Cause who can’t escape himself, regresses emotionally when he’s hurting, and genuinely does think that if people show care for him, they want to sleep with him.
• Deconstructor Fleet: The show was one of the first dramedies, and a lot of the experimental episodes were the first of their kind. Hawkeye is the Trope Codifier of a Sad Clown (where everyone knows he’s going to break in the end), he and Margaret deconstruct Really Gets Around (they enjoy sex, but there’s a lot of trauma to unpack, and her “Hot Lips” reputation has effects for her career) and B.J. deconstructs the Standard '50s Father, in that he wants to be like that but can’t fit the image.
• Defeat by Modesty: Hawkeye and Winchester steal B.J.'s clothes out of the shower in retaliation for a series of practical jokes.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: Margaret Houlihan starts off as an unlikable martinet. Eventually, she splits from Frank and relaxes, joining the others for poker games and other social activities.
• Deliberately Monochrome: "The Interview" episode, and the new footage in "Our Finest Hour". Also, the various home movies (save for Henry's).
• Delivery Not Desired: In the episode "Dear Sigmund", Sidney Freedman feels down in the dumps after a psychiatric patient of his commits suicide because of voices in his head. Wanting a "vacation", Sidney retreats to the 4077th for a couple of weeks; while there, he writes a letter about the people and the hijinks of the 4077th to none other than Sigmund Freud.
• Demoted to Extra
  • M*A*S*H started off with a whole bunch of characters in the pilot, many of which were ported over from the movie. Aside from the familar leads (Hawkeye, Trapper, Henry, Margaret, Frank, Radar) the pilot episode has a closing sequence that announces the personnel assigned to M*A*S*H 4077: the list includes Karen Phillip as Lt. Dish (who lasted only one more episode); G. Wood as General Hammond (two more episodes); Timothy Brown as Spearchucker (five more episodes); and Patrick Adiarte as Ho-John (six more episodes). All had major moments in the pilot, and were clearly being set up to be recurring characters — but they were given little to do in future appearances, and were gone by the end of the first season, if not sooner. Note that the character of Spearchucker was supposedly written out for greater historical accuracy, as the writers claimed there were no records of African-American surgeons serving in Korea. (There were, in fact, black doctors in Korea, and Spearchucker was based on an African-American doctor that Richard Hornberger heard about at the 8055.)
  • Odessa Cleveland as Nurse Ginger Bayliss also had a showcase credit at the end of the pilot, and actually stuck around through the early fourth season. But in what was maybe the show's most literal case of Demoted To Extra, Cleveland's occasional appearances on M*A*S*H became shorter and more infrequent over time, and by her last few appearances, she was uncredited and had almost no dialogue.
  • Other pilot characters were virtual extras to begin with: Ugly John and Lieutenant Scorch were not really identifiable behind their masks and had very limited dialogue in the pilot. As well, the actors portraying these roles didn't receive any special audio billing in the closing, unlike the other characters intended to be regulars. However, both John and Scorch got a little more development and exposure early in season 1 ... then faded slowly into the background as the season continued. Ugly John had disappeared completely by season's end; Lt. Scorch made it all the way to the first episode of season two before going the way of Chuck Cunningham.
• Department of Major Vexation: The entire U.S. military is often portrayed this way. The requisitions department fouls up particularly frequently during the show's run, sending bulk summer clothes and hammocks during a record cold and sending bulk orders of diapers to a front-line surgical unit.
• Department of Redundancy Department: Radar speaks like this, particularly in his waning years on the show; on more than one occasion he talks about someone being "naked with no clothes on."
  • Henry has a number of these from time to time: "Radar, hand me this here clipboard that I have right here in my hand here."
    • Sometimes, as in the specific example given, it's the result of Radar anticipating him and handing him the item he wants before he's finished asking for it.
  • Frank also has his moments, particularly in his last two seasons when he de-evolves into a one-dimensional, psychopathic character.
• Descent into Addiction: During the fifth season (Frank's last), Margaret's engagement and eventual marriage to Donald Penobscott effectively ends her affair with Frank, which drives him over the edge, and as that season progresses, his obsession for her grows and grows to pathological proportions; his attempts to just talk or eat with her usually ends with him breaking down and making a move on her, only for her to push him away and threaten to tell Penobscott.
  • In "Dr. Winchester and Mr. Hyde", Charles starts taking amphetamines to make up for a lack of sleep and quickly becomes addicted to them.
  • "Tea and Empathy" has B.J. dealing with a patient who became addicted to morphine after a hip wound.
• Determinator: A rare comedic example with Klinger, who in the early seasons is never in an episode that doesn't feature him trying some way to get that elusive Section 8 or otherwise get out of the Army.
  Henry: [pulls out binder of Klinger's past hardship-discharge requests] Father dying, last year. Mother dying, last year. Mother and father dying. Mother, father, and older sister dying. Mother dying and older sister pregnant. Older sister dying and mother pregnant. Younger sister pregnant and older sister dying. Here's an oldie but a goodie: half of the family dying, other half pregnant. [puts file down] Klinger, aren't you ashamed of yourself?
  Klinger: Yes sir. [beat] I don't deserve to be in the Army.
• Deus Angst Machina: While everyone had breakages and awful things happen and came out more exhausted than when they came in, Hawkeye got put through so much extra shit that they even lampshaded it both in-universe and out: “Bottom’s Up” had the characters note that if anything bad happens it’s bound to happen to Hawkeye, and the writers trolled Trapper John MD with a fake synopsis that Trapper died in a car crash and Hawkeye fell apart, and the Trapper writers panicked, thinking that plot was totally real and plausible.
• Devastating Remark: "Maj. Fred C Dobbs". During a session in OR, Frank is exceptionally short with Ginger, a nurse who was seen sporadically through the first three seasons. Frank snaps at her repeatedly, then tells Maj. Houlihan that he doesn't want Ginger at his table any longer as "she's an incompetent bungler". Ginger leaves the OR in tears, and it takes a concentrated effort by Hawk and Trapper to lift her spirits again.
• Developing Nations Lack Cities: In the show's version of South Korea, there are no cities except Seoul. Everything else is either farmland, farmland which has become war-torn battlefields, or army encampments.
• Did They or Didn't They?: Hawkeye and Trapper. A nurse lampshaded that they should be left alone as early as the third episode, Trapper gets Radar to give Hawkeye a kiss and The Joker Is Wild has Hawkeye making B.J. jealous by bending over right in front of him and detailing the “perversion” he and Trapper got up to.
• Died in Your Arms Tonight: Having had trauma over Never Got to Say Goodbye for most of his life, his best childhood friend dying in season one (on an operating table and Hawkeye can’t save him), and being a Drama Queen anyway, Hawkeye is exhausted by the finale and asks B.J. to just say it, adding in that if he were dying, would B.J. hold him in his arms or let him lie there and bleed.
• Diegetic Soundtrack Usage: Trapper whistles the theme tune while entering the Mess Tent in "Dear Dad... Again".
• Digital Destruction: Due to the series' popularity, and the constant reprinting of episodes for syndicated markets, the video presentation on DVD isn't exactly impressive. While the picture quality is certainly an improvement over syndicated prints, earlier seasons on DVD show evidence of digital imperfections on occasion, such as pixelization and bad interlacing. Seasons 4 and 5 are probably the worst for this, but luckily things improve greatly afterwards, to the point that the last few seasons look wonderful on DVD.
  • More recently, the show is presented in HD widescreen on Hulu and MeTV. The picture quality is passable, but it's yet another victim of having the entire series reframed and cropped to fit a 16x9 TV for reruns/streaming.
• Discontinuity Nod: A few times in seasons 1-3, Hawkeye said he was from Vermont. In Welcome To Korea a soldier is from there, and he explicitly says the area is close but he doesn’t live there.
• Disease Bleach: The in-universe reason for Hawkeye aging eleven years in three was the stress and Sanity Slippage making him skinnier, paler and turning his hair grey.
• Disobeyed Orders, Not Punished: This shows up from time to time:
  • In the very first episode, Hawk and Trapper are nearly busted for holding a party against orders. But then a surge of wounded soldiers are sent their way. General Hammond tells Henry that he was utterly impressed with their operating skills. Hawk and Trapper come out with a pair of handcuffs on, and Henry tells them that Hammond was too impressed to have them court-martialed.
  • In one episode, Hawkeye and BJ cause a minor mutiny by not returning to camp from Rosie's Bar. Potter tells them that he's pissed with them because he feels he deserves and has earned the respect that is his due. They apologize, telling him that they were revolting against a great many things, but they hadn't intended for Potter to be one of them. Ultimately, the stern lecture they got is their only punishment.
  • In another episode, after Potter informs the group that they've upped rotation points again ^note  This is actually an error as the points system was not in use in Korea Hawkeye grabs a Jeep and rushes off to the Peace Talks. He lies to the security forces guarding the road, and commits a few dozen offenses, then delivers his "The Reason You Suck" Speech to the delegation, then hightails it back to the 4077, where the camp is waiting to celebrate him. The MPs show up, and the head MP tells them that, officially, if Hawk is ever within twenty miles of the peace talks again, he's to be arrested. Unofficially, the General at the peace talks said that he wished he was a crazy doctor so he could get away with what Hawkeye did.
  • Father Mulchahy finds a soldier unwilling to open up to him because he doesn't have any frontline experience. Against Col. Potter's orders, he goes up to Battalion Aid with Radar. He ends up having to perform an emergency field tracheostomy with instructions over the radio from Hawkeye, while under enemy fire. When he gets back to the 4077, he tells Potter that even though he saved the young man's life, he knows he was wrong to disobey him. Potter feels the harrowing journey was punishment enough, especially in light of Mulchahy's apology.
• Distressed Dude: Col. Blake found himself trapped in a helicopter with a disgruntled pilot, who intended to kill him for denying him stateside leave. Both Frank and Charles got held up at gunpoint, though both ended up being Pity the Kidnapper. And Hawkeye was ambushed by a North Korean soldier and forced to try and save his comrade, which briefly led him to resign himself to getting killed or being a POW.
• Documentary Episode: "The Interview", "Our Finest Hour"
• Doesn't Know Their Own Birthday: B.J. couldn't make it home in time for his daughter Erin's birthday, so in the Grand Finale, the camp cheers him up with a birthday celebration for a Korean orphan whom they claim was born on the same day as Erin. They later admit that they have no idea when the Korean orphan was born (no one does), and they just selected a child who looked to be the right age. B.J. is still touched by the gesture, saying that there's no better present than getting your birthday.
• Doesn't Like Guns: Hawkeye, being an Actual Pacifist, is the most prominent participant of this trope:
  "I'll carry your books, I'll carry a torch, I'll carry a tune, I'll carry on, carry over, carry forward, Cary Grant, cash and carry, carry me back to old Virginny, I'll even hari-kari if you show me how, but I will not carry a gun!"
  • Invoked and played with a few seasons later when Hawkeye and Potter are away from the camp, stuck in a foxhole, pinned down by enemy fire, and drunk off their asses. After getting upbraided by Potter for being so mule-headed about his distaste for firearms, Potter convinces Hawkeye to just fire it in the air to scare away the enemy.
  • It should be noted that Hawkeye's hatred isn't reserved strictly for guns; he is also quick to express dislike for anything to do with war in general, including howitzers, bombs, tanks, ammo dumps, AA cannons, etc.
  • As for the rest of the main cast, most in the 4077th are neutral at best towards firearms, which, being doctors, makes sense. The only notable exceptions to this are the jingoistic Frank and the Old Soldier Potter, though Potter himself admits his marksmanship isn't what it used to be.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?:
  • Hawkeye’s love/hate of Billy in Bless You, Hawkeye is played like an abuse victim being a Love Martyr, as Billy was six years older, everyone including Hawkeye (well established to have mental health issues even as a kid) loving him, he treated nearly drowning Hawkeye as a joke that was his own fault, introduced him to at least smut, Sidney mentions bedrooms as a place that leaves the worst scars, and even when Hawkeye realizes what’s really happening he makes excuses that Billy was fooling around and that he loved him.
  • Comedically in “Carry On, Hawkeye” and “Comrades in Arms”, as from positions, writing and Hawkeye’s flirting in the former (and the fact that he already made jokes about enjoying it in “The Trial Of Henry Blake”) makes it sound like he’s getting pegged.
  • In “Strange Bedfellows”, David Ogden Steirs plays Winchester’s fears that snoring makes him not good enough to be a (republican/social darwinist kind of family) Winchester like it’s actually internalized homophobia.
• Don't Do Anything I Wouldn't Do: In "The Novocaine Mutiny", Frank Burns says this to Colonel Potter as the latter is heading to Tokyo on R&R, prompting Potter to reply, "I don't know that I'd want to do anything you would do."
• Doorstop Baby: The episode "Yessir, That's Our Baby".
• Double-Meaning Title: “Say No More” has Margaret unable to speak thanks to a case of laryngitis, and Hawkeye too exhausted to put up any kind of fight with war-hungry generals like he used to.
• Double Standard: The show is quite famous for calling out America for all of its misdeeds during the war, but was rather sketchier on doing the same to the other side. Any such misdeeds that were called out (mistreatment of prisoners, press ganging civilians, use of internationally outlawed weaponry, and other war crimes) were more often blamed on the "horrors of war" than on the soldiers or country committing them... unless that country was America. A lot of this awkwardness comes from the fact that, while the show was set in The Korean War, much of the rhetoric was directed at America's activities during The Vietnam War; the latter being a lot more politically controversial on the home front than Korea. Korea itself wasn't without its discourse, but not as much to the same extent as Vietnam.
• Double Standard Rape: Female on Male: Played for laughs in House Arrest, as when Frank doesn’t want her, the officer cries rape. Less so in Adam’s Ribs, as Hawkeye saying he did a favour for a stewardess by not screaming as she raped him, and tries to shrug it off but clearly has a lot of issues with not thinking he’s allowed personal boundaries.
• Double Standard: Rape, Male on Male: While there were a lot of rape jokes in the early days, this is averted once in "Rainbow Bridge" when Margaret mentions the prisoner exchange might end up in rape and Hawkeye actually looks afraid.
• Double Take: Hawkeye when B.J. gets his Rudyard Kipling reference in "Welcome to Korea". Beforehand he’d barely cared about the new arrival, and suddenly he’s a lot more interested.
• Downer Ending: "Abyssinia, Henry". See Cruel Twist Ending above.
  • "Preventive Medicine". Hawkeye removes a healthy appendix of a colonel to try to stop him from provoking an attack against his own troops so that he would have an excuse to seize a particular hill (for pride, apparently) and callously throw away the lives of the troops under his command (completely against orders, hence the previous provoked attack serving as a loophole). Hawkeye removes his appendix, but sadly, even without said colonel, the gears of war churn onward. To make it worse, unbeknownst to him, Potter was in the process of getting the colonel pulled from combat through legitimate means.
    • Also an example of Real Life Writes the Plot as the original script didn't deal with the implications of Hawkeye's actions (as in an earlier episode in which Hawkeye and Trapper do the exact same thing to Colonel Flagg just to get back the penicillin he stole, without any kind of hand-wringing). Mike Farrell complained that B.J. wouldn't stand for that, and his objections were written in.
  • "Period of Adjustment" deals with B.J.'s growing despair due to being separated from his family and ends with him broken and sobbing against Hawkeye on the floor.
  • "Yessir, That's Our Baby" has the staff find an abandoned Korean Doorstop Baby girl of mixed race by an American soldier. Warned by Father Mulcahy that the girl will face a hellish existence in Korea, the staff try to get her sent to the United States. Unfortunately, all avenues fail with no one willing to help and the staff have no choice but to follow Father Mulcahy's original suggestion to leave the baby at a secluded monastery where she will have sanctuary with a chance of later being sent to America but with a limited life.
  • The Grand Finale, "Goodbye, Farewell and Amen", has its share of these as well:
    • Potter leaving Sophie behind when he returns to the States.
    • Hawkeye seemingly giving up surgery to instead become a general practitioner due to his PTSD.
    • The musicians that Charles had been training getting killed on their way home.
    • Mulcahy going deaf.
• Do You Want to Haggle?: In "Dear Mildred", Frank and Margaret are commissioning a local Korean artist to make a wooden bust of Col. Potter's head for his birthday:
  Artist: Six bucks.
  Margaret: Well, Frank?
  Frank: Huh?
  Margaret: [softly, through a clenched smile] These people have no espect-ray unless you aggle-hay over the ice-pray.
  Frank: [after mentally translating] Five dollars.
  Artist: Seven-fifty.
  Frank: Sold.
  Margaret: [glaring at Frank] UMB-day!
• Dramedy: A Trope Codifier, if not Ur-Example.
• Dream Sequence: The aptly titled "Dreams" features one.
• Dressing to Die: In "The Army-Navy Game", an unexploded bomb lands in the middle of the compound; Klinger dons the suit he was drafted in, on the grounds that if they die when the bomb goes off, the way he wants people to see him as before their demise is, "Like a person with a nice suit." Though he does vow that if the bomb doesn't go off, he'll go back to wearing dresses.
• Dr. Jerk: Burns as an incompetent version and Winchester as a highly competent one.
• Drives Like Crazy: One of the camp's ambulance drivers apparently drove this way, and an episode has a moment when he's driving so fast getting out of the camp (with wounded aboard) that the bus turns over. Potter is angry at the driver's recklessness...but then stops when Radar sees that the guy is dead. Potter's then left with the unenviable task of writing his folks about how much of a good person the man was even though he got himself killed due to being careless, not to mention re-injuring the soldiers that were in the ambulance.
• Drowning My Sorrows: Or, as Margaret once puts it, "taking them for a swim".
  • In one episode, an upset Radar takes a rare swig of Hawkeye and B.J.'s moonshine gin, then grimaces at the taste.
    Radar: I thought this stuff was supposed to make you feel better.
    B.J.: No, it's supposed to make you feel nothing.
• Drugs Are Bad: "Dr. Winchester and Mr. Hyde". Winchester gets addicted to amphetamines, and pays the price as the addictive qualities and side effects take their toll.
• Dry Crusader: Frank Burns, in "Alcoholics Unanimous"; a visiting general who's recovering from surgery, in "The Moon Is Not Blue".
• Dude, Not Funny!: Hawkeye makes casual jokes about being violated or being sexually active while young, making everyone (Trapper and B.J. included) uncomfortable. “Lil” implies he’s worse offscreen, Winchester and Margaret sick of jokes about “his dismal puberty”.
• Dysfunction Junction: Big time, especially in the later seasons. The various members of the medical staff and personnel (as well as various visiting/wounded soldiers and even some of the high-ranking generals from elsewhere) tend to have their own issues, mental, familial or otherwise, as they deal with the horrors of war on a regular basis. This is ultimately the reason why Klinger can't get a Section 8 discharge, as he's so well-adjusted that compared to the rest of the loopy 4077th he doesn't stick out when he tries to pass off as crazy, as he points out in a letter to his uncle Abdul.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Watching the early seasons (and Season 1 in particular) can be a disorienting experience if you're more accustomed to the later ones, due to the turnover in the cast as well as the Cerebus Syndrome mentioned above.
  • A prime example of this: in the early seasons, the laugh track will sometimes play in the OR, something the producers objected to and which was excised in the later seasons.
    • That only happened three times, one of which was justifiable, as it was during Frank's Rashomon Style flashback making himself out as being a super surgeon during a particularly heavy deluge — we all know not to take Ferret Face seriously.
  • Season 3's "The General Flipped at Dawn" featured the only time when McLean Stevenson and Harry Morgan would appear in the same episode as Lt. Col. Henry Blake and Major General Bartford Hamilton Steele, respectively. When Season 4 aired after Lt. Col Blake died in a helicopter crash after his discharge, Morgan would return in the main cast as Col. Sherman Potter, the 4077th's new commandant.
• Eagleland: Mocked in “Mail Call Again”, as B.J. and Hawkeye tell Radar it’s fine to be an American spy, because good guys can do anything rotten.
• Earned Stripes:
  • In one episode a nurse with the rank of sergeant is given an unofficial, honorary field promotion to 2nd lieutenant for the last three weeks of his tour of duty. Major Houlihan donates her old lieutenant bars to pin on him.
  • In a late episode Klinger earns a promotion from corporal to sergeant and has a brand new set of stripes on his arm.
• Eat the Evidence: Done by the entire unit to an illicitly acquired side of beef. When an MP shows up looking for the beef, he's invited to sit down and have a plate, which he happily accepts.
• Economy Cast: The 4077th as depicted on the show has a much smaller staff than a real-life MASH unit would have had (or that we see in the novel or film).
  • The point is made on the show that there are around 200 people in the unit, yet no more than two dozen are ever seen at one time, even when there are formations that require everyone to be present.
  • Also, when Colonel Potter says he wants to see all the officers, the only people who show up are the members of the main cast and not the other officers in the unit, including all the nurses.
• El Spanish "-o":
  • Radar, while trying to communicate with some Greeks:
    Radar: Uh... put-em here-o. (Not even "os", which would be the real equivalent of el Spanish-o in Greek.)
  • A family of Koreans set up housekeeping in the middle of the camp. Henry tries to tell them to leave: "Go-ee home-ee!" When that doesn't work, he tells Radar to tell them to leave. Radar then tells the family, "Go-ee home-ee!"
• Embarrassing Cover Up: When an optometrist visits the camp, Houlihan comes in for a checkup, but everyone thinks she's there to hit on him; when everyone else leaves, she reveals that she'd rather they think "Hot Lips" was on the move than let on to her vision problems.
• Embarrassing Middle Name: Hawkeye and Trapper crack up when they learn Frank's is "Marion".
• Embarrassing Nickname:
  • Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan, Frank "Ferret Face" Burns.
  • In "The Foresight Saga" we (and Klinger) learn that Potter's wife calls him "Pudd'nhead", a Shout-Out to Mark Twain.
• Ensemble Cast: Everyone gets some time in the spotlight. Less so in early seasons, as both Rogers and Stevenson left because Hawkeye was the most fleshed out character, but when Winchester came in (and Swit and Farrell were working with Alda to make their characters well-rounded, who unlike in early seasons when he and Rogers tried, had more control), everyone routinely got their day.
• Entitled to Have You: General Korshack in “The General’s Practitioner” towards Hawkeye, who is introduced as “tamer of the tiger tank”, and only listens to Hawk refusing to go in the eleventh hour of complaining.
• Epiphany Therapy: Averted with Hawkeye’s breakdowns, and Sidney episodes generally. All he can really do is give them the tools to stay functional, and in Hawkeye’s case, he gets steadily worse throughout the series, with people close to him certain he’s about to snap, until he loses it properly in the finale.
• Episode Title Card: Used in "Our Finest Hour" (the second interview show) and "Goodbye, Farewell and Amen" (the Grand Finale).
• Escalating War: A staple, an example being "The Smell of Music".
• Elephant in the Living Room: Trapper hangs around “The More I See You”, being the most recent person to leave Hawkeye without saying goodbye, Hawkeye managing to be shocked when B.J. says he’s not tempted to cheat, and in the long line of Hawkeye’s interests who he keeps a torch for, as shown by the finale.
• Eternal Sexual Freedom: Luckily for Hawkeye that unlike Frank who gets Mistaken for Gay and threatened, all the generals he makes fun of in acting like The Tease don’t seem to mind, Flagg excluded. They're more likely to be leering at him too.
• Even the Guys Want Him: Frank is a mild, and subtle example of this when it comes to Colonel Flagg.
• Every Helicopter Is a Huey: Mostly averted in favor of the historically-accurate Bell 47G (or H-13 Sioux, as it was designated for military use). However, some early episodes have a model Huey hanging from the ceiling of Col. Blake's office, and later on the O Club has a poster on the wall reading "4077th Med. Co. Air Ambulance" and featuring an illustration of either a Huey or another Vietnam-era chopper.
  • Possibly intentional, as in the movie and in the first few seasons, Korea was meant to be a metaphor for Vietnam.
  • Incidentally, the Bell 47G is the only helicopter that really makes that "chirp-chirp-chirp" sound as the drive belts disengage. It's become a well-known helicopter movie cliche.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • In "Abyssinia, Henry", Frank is seen crying when Henry's death is announced.
  • Klinger may have pulled every con he could think of to get out of the Army, and would swear to every god he knew (and some he made up!) that he was insane. But when there were wounded that needed care, he dropped the act and did his job with gusto. In "The Young & Restless", where he portrays to perfection the delusion that he is actually back in Toledo, instead of dropping the charade when wounded are brought in he just pitches in to help the "accident victims".
  • As arrogant as Winchester could be and proud of his conservative roots, he took exception when a Congressional aide tries to make Margaret out as a communist sympathizer.
    Wichester: Sir, I am so conservative that I make you look like a New Dealer, and I must tell you that to suspect Margaret Houlihan of political subversion is absurd.
• Evolving Credits:
  • The opening credits originally showed Hawkeye and Trapper leading two groups of personnel to get the latest group of wounded soldiers off the incoming choppers, with Hawkeye shown in close-up, and the two captains directing the various corpsmen on the jeeps back down to Pre-Op under the credits for Loretta Swit, Larry Linville, and Gary Burghoff. In Season 4, after Wayne Rogers left the series, the shot of Trapper approaching the choppers was replaced with a shot of B.J. running toward the camera; in Season 5, this was replaced with another shot of B.J. actually examining a patient on a stretcher, and in Season 7, when Mike Farrell had grown a moustache, this was replaced again with a close-up of B.J. looking at one of the wounded and then nodding to someone off camera. Trapper was also cropped out of the shot of the jeeps driving down to Pre-Op, and the font for the cast credits was enlarged.
  • When Gary Burghoff left the series early in Season 8, the Over the Shoulder shot of Radar watching the approaching choppers was cropped to remove him.
• Exact Time to Failure: This occurs in, and is the entire point of, the episode "Life Time". The doctors run over the timer, but since they induced hypothermia, the patient still recovers.
• Exact Words: In "Picture This", B.J. and Charles get into an argument with Hawkeye over the latter's insistence on reading a pulp detective novel until 2am by a light that is keeping his tentmates awake. Hawkeye, already feeling unkindly disposed toward the other two, chooses his words poorly when refusing to switch off the light, allowing Charles to exploit a loophole...
  Hawkeye: I will turn out this light when and only when I get to the end of this book!
  Charles: [removing his Sleep Mask] Very well. [gets out of bed, marches across the Swamp, pulls the book out of Hawkeye's hands, and tears it down the spine at the page Hawkeye is reading, handing back the part he has already read] You are now at the end of your book. [switches off the light] Good night.
• Expansion Pack Past: Hawkeye has Trauma-Induced Amnesia set up from the first season, so while we get details from everyone’s past across the series, by the finale we and he find out that he has so much abandonment trauma, was strange even as a child and had an abusive co-dependent relationship with his six years older cousin.
• Extra-Long Episode: The fourth, fifth, sixth, and tenth season premieres were originally hour-long episodes that were later split into half-hour two-parters for reruns; similarly, Season Seven originally had an hour-long Clip Show that was also split into a half-hour two-parter in syndication. Of course, the Grand Finale was a two hour (minus commercials) TV movie.
• Extreme Omni-Goat: Season 10's "That Darn Kid" has a goat eating the 4077th's entire monthly payroll, leaving Hawkeye (who's serving paymaster duty) and Klinger (who bought the animal from a local merchant so it could provide the unit with fresh milk) in deep trouble till they can convince the officer sent to investigate the issue that they didn't make up the story to cover for embezzlement.
• Failure Is the Only Option:
  • Klinger trying to get a Section 8, Burns trying to instill military discipline, Winchester trying to get transferred back to Tokyo. In all cases, Status Quo Is God guarantees they will fail.
  • Winchester seems to play on his awareness that his exile to the 4077th is permanent at the end of the episode where the staff members' families meet at a party back in the States. On hearing that his parents and Radar's mother and uncle hit it off so well that they're planning another get-together after the war, he asserts that for all he cares, they "...can bring your goat. Makes no difference to me, for I shan't be there; I'm turning myself in to the Chinese."
• Faint in Shock:
  • Frank has been known to do this.
  • Radar, particularly when he is around anything related to childbirth.
• Fake Aristocrat: In order to get Radar into the Officers' Club at the Kimpo airport in "Welcome to Korea", Hawkeye appends B.J.'s captain's bars to the corporal's uniform. When questioned about this, Pierce explains that the Army is field-testing a new intermediate rank: corporal captain.
• Fake Guest Star: Jamie Farr and William Christopher were regulars as Max Klinger and Father Francis Mulcahy, respectively from nearly the beginning, However, it wasn't until the middle seasons when they received top billing for their roles; they had been relegated to the closing credits for at least three seasons.
• Fake Identity Baggage: A soldier steals the dog tags and paperwork of a friend killed in battle who had been about to be sent home. When he confesses to Father Mulcahy, the soldier insists he isn't hurting anybody but himself. By showing him the dead man's mail, Father Mulcahy forces the imposter to realize what he would be doing to the dead man's family, who would never know what happened to their loved one.
• Fake Pregnancy: This is the subject of an episode that was ultimately never filmed, as at the time it was considered too risqué. The episode, entitled "Hawkeye on the Double," had Hawkeye seeing two different nurses behind each of their backs, and when the two found out about each other, they planned on getting back at him by both pretending to be pregnant with his child, and pressuring him into choosing which one of them to marry. The script for the episode is available as a special feature on DVD.
• Fallback Marriage Pact: In "Mr. And Mrs. Who?," Charles returns from R&R in Tokyo with a hangover and discovers that he got married during that time. When the "bride," Donna Marie Parker, shows up at the camp, she tells Charles, who at the time announced in drunken revelry that he was going to marry the first girl he came across, that she agreed to marry him only to shut him up. And that the "minister" who performed the ceremony was the bartender (a Druid at that). At the end, the personnel hold a drunken dissolution ceremony in the mess tent, conducted by B.J. (with a Sad Sack comic book in place of a bible).
  B.J.: Do you, Charles Emerson Winchester, take this lovely if gullible young woman to be your unlawful unwedded un-wife?
  Charles: I undo.
  B.J.: And do you, Donna Marie Parker, take this pickled amnesiac to be your unlawful unwedded un-husband?
  Donna: I undo.
  B.J.: Then through the powers vested within me by the state of intoxication, I now pronounce you man...and woman. You may now ignore the bride!
• Familiar Soundtrack, Foreign Lyrics: Many early episodes had Japanese or Korean language versions of traditional American songs played over the PA in order to emphasize the fact that they're in Korea.
• Family of Choice: In the Winchester seasons, as he gradually becomes a better person and Margaret learns to be more open.
• Fanservice: Margaret wearing shorts and a backless bathing suit in "The Merchant of Korea"; B.J. doing pull-ups in "The Smell of Music."
  Hawkeye, watching B.J.: Am I sinking to my knees or are you rising in the air?
  • Subverted in an episode set during a heat wave at night; the audience is treated to a shot of Margaret in her cot wearing only underwear and a small T-shirt, moaning softly...except she's moaning because of a bad heat rash on her butt.
• A Father to His Men: Colonel Blake, to Radar; Colonel Potter, to everyone.
• Faux Affably Evil: General Clayton spends the first season relatively jolly, flirting with Margaret and fine with Piercintyre’s antics for the most part. In For The Good Of The Outfit, he buries the evidence when they make reports about American shelling, and friendly threatens to send them to the front line.
• Faux Yay: In "Bananas, Crackers and Nuts", Hawkeye tries to get leave by (among other things) pretending to be romantically interested in Burns.
• Feedback Rule: In "Change of Command," Radar prepares to make an announcement for the senior officers to report to Potter's office. In response to the P.A. microphone's immensely loud feedback, he drops the mic as if it hurt his hand.
• Fell Asleep Crying: A Stock Joke, mostly from Hawkeye or B.J. Random crying or crying yourself to asleep is apparently common in the camp.
• Fever Dream Episode: "Follies of the Living - Concerns of the Dead" is both this and a Paranormal Episode, involving a recently-killed soldier whose ghost hangs around the 4077 and communicates with Klinger, who's delirious with fever.
• The '50s: Ostensibly. As the seasons roll on, it's increasingly apparent that the show is The '70s disguised as The '50s.
• File Mixup: In the episode "A Smattering Of Intelligence," Col. Flagg and Vinnie Pratt, an old friend of Trapper's who is in Intelligence, compete with each other to find security leaks at the 4077th. Hawkeye and Trapper mess with Frank's personal file (taking out his real file and inserting a doctored one) to make it appear to the two agents that he's a communist and a fascist. They let on to the prank eventually, when the agents try to arrest Frank.
  Flagg: You could do ten years for this.
  Hawkeye: What? For doctor file doctoring?
• Finale Movie: The series ends with the movie-length special "Goodbye, Farewell and Amen", which has the 4077 disband after the Korean War finally ends.
• Finale Season: John Rappaport in the Mash Matters podcast (episode ten) stated that they all wrote Goodbye Farewell and Amen before season 11, and wrote that season as a way to get to that finale, so giving Klinger a reason to stay in Korea and pointed foreshadowing about Hawkeye’s breakdown.
• Finger Poke of Doom:
  Col. Flagg: Do you believe that I can break your leg with this finger?
  Charles: Strangely enough, I, I... I do.
• Finger-Twitching Revival: In one episode, a soldier's "corpse" is shipped to the 4077th along with a bunch of wounded. For most of the episode, the viewers are the only ones who see the soldier try to move enough to call for help. Luckily, Mulcahy finally notices when he goes to administer the Last Rites.
• Finishing Each Other's Sentences: Hawkeye and B.J. often do this.
• First-Name Basis: Most characters in the show are usually called by their first names (Charles, Margaret, Frank, B.J., even Col. Henry Blake) or an affectionate nickname ("Hawkeye", "Trapper", "Radar"). The only ones of the major cast to whom everyone regularly refers by their rank/title and last name are Col. Potter and Fr. Mulcahy, out of a sense of respect from pretty much everyone.
  • The notable exception to this trope is Klinger, whose first name, Maxwell, is very rarely used.
• Fixing the Game:
  • The craps game in the back of Rosie's bar is rigged.
  • Frank runs a bookie operation for baseball games that are broadcast to the camp during the day. Turns out he's listening to previous, late-night broadcasts of the same games to get the outcomes before taking anyone's bets.
  • Charles giving uppers to Radar's mouse Daisy before she races a marine's champion rodent.
  • Hawkeye and Trapper rig a boxing match by putting ether on Trapper's glove, but Frank realizes the fix is in and replaces the ether with water.
  • During the bowling match against the marines, Charles and B.J. drug their ringer with a pill that turns his urine blue, tricking him into thinking he had a disease that his bowling would aggravate.
  • Father Mulcahy convinces his opponent to throw a race so the proceeds of the bets can be used to build a roof for an orphanage.
• Flanderization: Radar's naïveté, Col. Potter's crankiness, and Frank Burns's jerk-assedness (and flakiness, and paranoia) all grew more and more pronounced as the show progressed.
  • In early seasons, Frank showed occasional flashes of human decency. For instance, in season 1's "Sticky Wicket", when Hawkeye re-opens a patient who's failing to get better and discovers he'd overlooked a tiny bit of shrapnel damage, Frank quietly says "Anyone could have missed that." In season 2's "Kim" he tries to help when a little boy runs into a minefield, and in season 3's "O.R." he's horrified to learn he nearly removed a patient's sole kidney. Even as late as season 3 when Henry's death was announced, Frank has tears in his eyes as the camera pans over the OR. In all these instances Linville played Frank's emotions as genuine, not faked or selfishly motivated.
• Flipping Helpless: In one episode, an ambulance-truck flipped on its back demonstrated to Colonel Potter the general unfitness of his camp: after everyone pushing together can't get it rightside up, a group of 4 MPs happens by and rights it all by themselves.
  • Another time, B.J. rolls a jeep onto its side while avoiding a crash. When he and Hawkeye attempt to right it, they roll it on its top, leaving them to walk back to the 4077.
• Flynning: "Requiem for a Lightweight" both plays straight and subverts this with boxing. Trapper is trying to just keep in the fight long enough to knock his opponent out with what he thinks is an ether-soaked glove. His opponent, however, seems to barely tap Trapper during the match despite having 197 wins.
• Foil: All of Hawkeye's Swampmates were this to him, to a certain extent. Trapper occasionally exhibited a world-weary pragmatism in contrast to Hawkeye's passionate idealism. B.J. was a devoted family man in contrast with Hawkeye's womanizing. Frank Burns was a jingoistic lover off all things military in contrast with Hawkeye's staunch liberal pacifism. And Charles was an aristocratic Boston Brahmin in contrast with Hawkeye's small-town unpretentiousness.
• The Food Poisoning Incident: Happens to Charles and Margaret in "The Grim Reaper", and nearly the entire camp in "The Yalu Brick Road".
• Foreshadowing:
  • A typo is made on the inscription of Margaret's replacement wedding ring: "Over hill, over dale, our love will ever fail". Her marriage to Donald ends in a bitter divorce roughly a year later (real time).
  • Hawkeye's dream in "Dreams" involves him helpless on a boat. The next season has him uncover the trauma that his friend nearly drowned him. Also while the numerous jokes about him ending up in an institution were valid reactions to his Sanity Slippage throughout the series, he seemed fond of jokes about him getting pregnant, all getting rewarded with a dead baby in the finale.
  • Both chickens and either genuinely not being able to tell what reality was like or acting like it for a prank (as in “Change Of Command”, claiming a chicken was a live patient) were commonly associated with Hawkeye. "In Love and War", written by Alda, had him mistakenly call himself a chicken in French.
  • Hawkeye does the “this place is driving me out of my already demented mind” line a few times in season one, but thanks to Trauma-Induced Amnesia (and probably not thinking that far ahead), we don’t get to see what damaged him before Korea a lot later.
  • In "The Late Captain Pierce" B.J. puns that (in a good mood) Hawkeye at the party looks more like himself than he's ever done, hinting that the main problem beyond the army cock up and what he's really hurting over is unprocessed grief over Henry and Trapper going.
  • Hawkeye tells B.J. in “The More I See You” that he hasn’t hid since he was three, and sometimes he’s sorry he was ever found. With the Trauma Conga Line coming his way in just a few years, you can’t blame the poor kid.
• Forged Message: Klinger occasionally would forge letters, particularly in mail call episodes, in further attempts to get a discharge; Henry kept many of Klinger's letters on record and uses them against him to point out how ridiculous the claims in the letters are, leading up to one letter that reads, "Half of the family dying, other half pregnant." Potter, on the other hand, dug a little deeper when Klinger tried to pull a similar stunt on him. Incidentally, Klinger has no brothers.
  Potter: Klinger, this letter is in your handwriting.
  Klinger: I translated my mother's letter, it was in Lebanese.
  Potter: Let me see it.
  Klinger: I burned it.
  Potter: Uh-huh.
  Klinger: It's part of a religious ceremony.
  Potter: Held when two brothers die in a harmonica factory?
• Forgotten Theme Tune Lyrics: Which were used in the original movie but not the series.
  Through early morning fog I see / Visions of the things to be / The pains that are withheld for me / I realize and I can see / That Suicide Is Painless / It brings on many changes / And I can take or leave it if I please.
  • The movie version of the theme, written by Johnny Mandel and then-14-year-old Mike Altman, was a huge hit on college and community radio stations - and a number-one single in England ten years later, in 1980. The lyrics were probably Mistaken for Profound; at best, they're an Ice-Cream Koan; Robert Altman, who directed the film, asked for "the stupidest lyrics ever written" and his son turned them out in five minutes. Painless Pole, the character that the song refers to, received only a passing mention in the pilot and other episodes, so the double meaning the lyrics contain is lost.
• Foul Cafeteria Food: The mess-hall at the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital was known for its horrible cuisine, from the first season to the last.
  • In one early episode Hawkeye protests the endless repetition of food, when he's told that once again the choices are liver or fish, saying he'd eaten a river of liver and an ocean of fish.
  • A running gag that started in season 4 was Hawkeye sniffing his food, then describing what it smelled like to BJ Hunnicutt. BJ would tell him- sometimes politely, sometimes not -to knock it off.
  • Winchester, in one of his earliest encounters with the mess hall, asks if there any green vegetables. He's told there's some lettuce, but that the rats had a go at it first. Winchester's reply says it all.
  Winchester: Corporal, you have made me lose my appetite and I...am grateful!
  • Radar brings Col. Potter a meal from the mess hall. He asks what it is, and when Radar tells him, he replies, "Take it away. I sent this dinner back two wars ago."
  • In one episode, Hawkeye is helping with the kitchen, and decides that he's going to treat the camp to french toast for breakfast. He begins to recite the recipe to the cook, milk, eggs, etc. The cook pulls out a huge vat and dumps powdered milk in it, then powdered eggs, then begins to hydrate the mixture with water from a hose before dumping in whole loaves of sliced bread. Hawk can barely hide his disappointment and disgust.
  • Father Mulchahy spends one episode growing corn in a garden, and turns the fully grown ears of corn over to the cook, anticipating the mouth-watering delight of corn on the cob. The Mulchahy's horror and incense, the cook creamed the corn. It was so egregious, the normally kind and cheerful Mulchahy calls the cook a "ninny".
  • The food also served in the early seasons to show another way Radar was a little weirdo: he loves the stuff and usually piles his plate high with mess hall food. Even after Character Development, this habit stuck until he left the show.
• Fox News Liberal: Winchester is a conservative version.
  Charles: (to a HUAC shill) I am so conservative that it makes you look like a New Dealer.
  • An insult that Hawkeye purposefully throws at Charles to make him talk visibly angers him:
    Hawkeye: Charles - your parents voted for Roosevelt (Beat) four times!
• Friends with Benefits: Margaret and Hawkeye end up being a rare example of friends who kiss and have sex (and tease each other for both Really Gets Around later on), but know full well they’d kill each other as a couple, never getting together beyond “Comrades In Arms”.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: In Mad Dogs And Servicemen, the scrabble game Hawkeye, Trapper and Henry are playing include “yearn” and “fag”.
• Freeze-Frame Ending: The show began using the flash variation in Season Six, usually to acknowledge the show's ever-changing story editors (or script consultants as they were eventually called), program consultants, and to acknowledge creative consultants Gene Reynolds (co-creator and previous producer) and Alan Alda. Also depending on the nature of the episode, the variation of the music cue would differ: while most episodes featured a short, upbeat arrangement of the show's main theme, especially sombre and poignant episodes would either use a slower and more melancholy arrangement or omit the music altogether. This continued up until the Grand Finale.
• Freudian Excuse: Frank Burns apparently had an absolutely miserable childhood.
• Friend to All Living Things: Radar has quite the menagerie.
• The Friendly Texan: Potter quickly and correctly identifies a patient as a Texan because he offered up his hand to shake despite being wounded.
• From Bad to Worse: Season one Hawkeye is bitter about Korea driving him out of his already demented mind. He has no clue how much worse his “wall to wall crazy” is going to get.
• Frozen in Time: The series went 11 seasons while the shooting part of the Korean War only lasted three years. Not only that, but the date given in the season 4 opener (September 19, 1952) means that the last eight seasons of the show take place over only ten months. In fact, later episodes tend to give earlier dates than earlier episodes. So we have Henry at the 4077th in 1952 and "later" Potter is there and it's 1950. Clearly they were stuck in a "Groundhog Day" Loop — probably why everyone complained so much about the war never ending.
• Funny Background Event: Maybe not entirely in the background, but if you watch Trapper John in "Private Charles Lamb" while the Greeks are bringing food in the mess tent, he tries to open three or four jars of food while chatting with Radar using his shirt to get a grip on the tight lids. He fails to open even one.
  • In one episode, a colonel is talking to one of his wounded soldiers who is in a full body cast, with only his eyes, mouth, and one hand visible. When the colonel leaves, the man waves his hand goodbye.
  • In "Cowboy," as Radar helps Henry to the hospital following the jeep crashing through his tent, Mulcahy moonwalks out of the shot; even the nurse who was standing next to him turns and looks on with a bemused look on her face.
  • In "Operation Noselift", Hawkeye stops to talk to Father Mulcahy in the compound. Behind them is a parked jeep in which two soldiers sit, one reading a hard-bound medical reference and the other a comic book, comparing notes.
    • The same episode has a scene where Hawkeye is making a phone call from Henry's office, and Trapper can be seen in the background playing with a Japanese doll on Henry's desk, breaking it, and hurriedly hiding the pieces. (Later, when Hawkeye and Trapper are out in the compound, an angry Henry comes up demanding to know who broke the doll.)
  • Anytime Hawkeye and Trapper watch Frank walk right into one of their pranks, Trapper cannot keep a straight face.
  • There's a recurring stock footage shot of the 4077th compound that has four corpsman doing the Can-Can on the wooden platform near the camp entrance.
  • In, "Adam's Ribs," during Hawkeye's tirade in the Mess Tent regarding the poor selection and quality of Army chow, Radar continues to eat, even swiping food off other people's trays.
  • In "Dear Dad", during the otherwise tense scene where Mulcahy is trying to talk Klinger out of using a grenade on Frank, watch the background behind Mulcahy. In one cut, an extra comes around the corner, suddenly realizes what he's about to walk into, and backpedals back around the corner.
• Fun with Acronyms: Hawkeye had a tendancy to reply to any mention of CINCOMPAC (Actually spelled CenComPac, or Central Command of the Pacific) with NINCOMPOOP.
  • Henry in "The Chosen People," introduces Captain Pak and Father Mulcahy to some officials regarding a family of indigenous Koreans who are camped out on the MASH compound.
  Henry: This is Captain Pak, R.O.K. And this is Father Mulcahy, G.O.D.
• Fun with Foreign Languages: In "Communication Breakdown," Winchester is forced to wear a shortie kimono he'd bought for his sister, after his bathrobe is stolen. He runs into Nurse Kelly, who tells him he "looks very Japanese", then asks if he speaks the language. When he replies that he does not, she bows and tells him (via subtitles), "Boy, you really look ridiculous." To which he returns the bow and thanks her.
  • In the "Dear Sigmund" episode, Klinger claims to have been hit in the head with a chopper blade and only able to speak in Arabic. Via subtitles, he tells Col. Potter things like, "My olive has no pit and there is no yolk in my egg"; "Grandfather, may your pomegranates grow as big as the Queen's fanny"; and (after Potter informs him the ploy won't work) "May the fleas of a thousand camels nest in your armpit."

G-I

• Gallows Humor: A sample from "The Late Captain Pierce," where the Army mistaken declares Hawkeye dead and B.J. holds a wake for him:
  P.A. Announcer: Attention all personnel. Come one, come all to a wake for the late great Captain Pierce. There'll be mourning all afternoon and evening. The deceased will deliver the eulogy, and the guests will have ten minutes for rebuttal. Remains to be seen in the Swamp.
  • Hawkeye offers to examine Trapper, who is ailing but doesn't want to be examined for it at the camp, in "Check-Up":
    Hawkeye: I'm used to autopsies.
  • Lampshaded by Col. Bloodworth after he watches Pierce work, and Hawk admits that wisecracks are his only way of opening his mouth without screaming.
• Gargle Blaster: As well as the notoriously awful booze from the still, the mint julep in “Potter’s Retirement” makes B.J. and Hawkeye choke.
• Gaslighting: Done to the titular character from "The Ringbanger" when Hawkeye and Trapper note how many casualties happen under his command and conspire to get him sent home.
  • Hawkeye, Trapper, and Radar try it on Henry in "Love and Marriage"; he catches on immediately.
  • When B.J. visits Hawkeye at the psych ward in "Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen", Hawkeye starts ranting about the movie Gaslight and how this was done to Ingrid Bergman's character, implying that he believes the same thing is being done to him.
• Gender Flip: Mentioned in "Tuttle" when Radar says his imaginary friend was this, of himself.
• Gentleman Snarker: Major Charles Emerson Winchester III, in his better moments.
• Gentlemen Rankers: Nurses usually start at second lieutenant, but male nurse Barney Hutchinson was forced to start at private. He has to pull enlisted man duty (KP, patrolling, etc.) in addition to his nursing assignments. Three weeks before he is discharged, Colonel Potter gives him an honorary field promotion to lieutenant for the remainder of his tour. ("Your Retention Please")
• Gesundheit: In "Margaret's Engagement," B.J., Hawkeye and Potter eavesdrop on Frank's phone call to his mother:
  Hawkeye: (quietly) He's crying.
  B.J.: Catharsis.
  Hawkeye: Gesundheit.
• Gilligan Cut: In "Too Many Cooks", Potter is acting unusually testy and irritable. At one point, the others are trying to decide whether one of them should confront him about what's bothering him.
  Margaret: Colonel Potter is a sensible, mature man. He can work it out himself. Leave him alone if he doesn't want to talk!
  (*cut*)
  Potter: Leave me alone. I don't want to talk.
  Margaret: Sir, you have to talk to me.
  • In an earlier episode, thanks to a combination of bad communication and bad timing, Margaret and Hawkeye are caught on the road during an air strike. As they take refuge in a hut, a bit of a spark ignites between them. Meanwhile, their friends back at the 4077th have learned what the pair accidentally headed into and are frantic with worry.
    B.J.: They must be going through hell out there!
    (cut to Margaret and Hawkeye locked in a passionate embrace)
• Girl of the Week: Or, in Hawkeye's case, a Nurse of the Week.
  • Largely averted in Seasons 2 and 3, where he almost exclusively was paired up with Nurse Gage.
• Girls Have Cooties: Hawkeye at 14 thought girls were martians, but still sleeps with them anyway. Finding him in bed with a girl at that age was the only time we hear his dad being livid with him.
• Glory Hound: Some of the commanding officers, like those who were determined to take some hill or other no matter what it cost in casualties.
• Gold Fever: Deliberately inculcated in Frank by Hawkeye and Trapper, in "Major Fred C. Dobbs".
• Good Parents: Radar and Hawkeye seem to be the only characters with good relationships to their own parents. Being a traumatised mess of course, Hawkeye still assumes his dad’s love will end soon, something his father is disappointed to hear.
• Gone Swimming, Clothes Stolen: In one episode, Margaret steals Hawkeye's and B.J.'s clothes while they are showering.
  • Radar did it to Hawkeye and Trapper once, when they made the mistake of making fun of him while showering.
  Hawkeye: You know without your glasses you could almost pass for offensive?
  Trapper: Hey, why don't you leave the little fellow alone.
  Radar: It's okay, I can take a joke. *steals their clothes and towels off the rack and leaves*
  Hawkeye and Trapper: Hey! Wait a minute! Where are you going? I was kidding! He was kidding! You're beautiful!
  • In "Communications Breakdown" an anonymous prankster does this to Charles (all Charles and the viewer sees is an arm reaching into the shower and stealing his bathrobe), leaving behind a only a newspaper. It's later taken up to eleven when the prankster steals all of Winchester's clothing and furniture from his tent.
• Good Shepherd: Father Mulcahy.
• Go Through Me: While played more for laughs in Trapper’s case, both he (“Yankee Doodle Doctor”) and BJ (“Rally Around The Flagg Boys”) rush to put themselves between Hawkeye and someone he’s pissed off enough to pose a danger.
• Government Conspiracy: The army tries to cover up its mistake in shelling a civilian South Korean village in "For the Good of the Outfit," by claiming North Korea was responsible, burying the story, and hiding the evidence.
• Gratuitous Spanish: Col. Potter loves this trope. Father Mulcahy attracts a little of this as Potter calls him "Padre" (Father), which is moderately common US Army slang; the rest of the cast uses "Father," but some Korean characters picked it up. Potter is not even close to being a native speaker; his pronunciation is horrendous, e.g. he pronounces "Padre" and "comprende" with an "ee" sound at the end.
  • At one point, he conducts a phone call with a Canadian unit with some very gratuitous French sprinkled in, also terribly pronounced. The viewers are collectively embarrassed for him.
• G-Rated Drug: Averted in "Dr. Winchester and Mr. Hyde". Winchester gets addicted to amphetamines, which are hardly G-Rated.
  • And in "Tea and Empathy", a wounded man is hooked on morphine and B.J. helps him quit.
• Greeting Gesture Confusion: In "The Nurses", one Sergeant Tony Baker drops in at the 4077th, where his newly wedded wife is a nurse. Baker steps into Radar's office and proceeds to introduce and greet himself by sticking out his hand for handshake, which Radar confuses for a salute. The two briefly try to figure out what to do, but just shrug it off.
• Grey-and-Grey Morality: Neither side is played as completely bad or good. The 4077th often treats North Koreans, Chinese, and Allied troops alike and often meets men on the other side who are civil and polite, and some of whom even Majored in Western Hypocrisy or compliment the unit on their surgical skill. At the same time we also have people like Major Burns and Major Houlihan, who embody Eagleland Type 2 to an absurd degree, people like Colonel Flagg, and a variety of soldiers and officers who are just as cruel and bloodthirsty as they often accuse the Communists of being. Hawkeye claims numerous times that both sides bleed just the same.
• Gung Holier Than Thou: Col. Flagg is literally described as such.
  • Burns and Houlihan also qualify until they stopped going over the CO's head to General Clayton.
• Guns Do Not Work That Way: In Klinger's first scene, he does a Dramatic Gun Cock on his M1 Garand when his dress gets cut by a prisoner with a scalpel, forcing the prisoner to drop the scalpel. No round is seen ejected. The M1 rifle works by inserting a clip and allowing the bolt to close, which chambers a round. The only way one could rack the bolt and not eject a round is if it was empty.
• Gut Punch: The end of "Abyssinia, Henry", when the 4077th gets the news that Henry died when his plane was shot down.
• Hahvahd Yahd In My Cah: Charles Emerson Winchester III, Boston native and Harvard alumnus.
• Halloween Episode: "Trick or Treatment".
• Hand-or-Object Underwear: Employed by Hawkeye in "Dear Dad...Again" (mess tent trays), B.J. in "Bottoms Up" (pillow), and Charles in "Communication Breakdown" (newspapers).
• Handshake Refusal: Winchester's dental woes coupled with his fear of dentists. In the end of the episode, Winchester is about to shake the hand of the man who Hawkeye and B.J. brought on to handle the episode's A-plot only for them to reveal he's a dentist; Winchester immediately retracts his hand, but due to his fear of dentists, not an attempt at being insulting.
• Haplessly Hiding: Colonel Flagg is an U.S. intelligence officer who sometimes visits the 4077th. In one episode he hides in a trash can outside the mess hall in order to talk with one of the show regulars. After the conversation ends, one of the soldiers working in the mess hall comes outside and unknowingly dumps some garbage in the trash can on top of him.
• Happily Married: Played straight with Henry, B.J., and Potter. Averted with Klinger, Margaret, and Frank.
  • Trapper is a more ambiguous case. He has no compunction about cheating, and the only time we see him writing a letter home it's to one of his daughters rather than his wife. On the other hand, we're never made privy to any actual conflicts in his marriage.
• Hates the Job, Loves the Limelight: Charles was sent to the 4077th after his CO got tired of losing over $600 to him playing cribbage. While nobody wanted to be in the southeast Asian theater, Charles detested it but was an admitted showoff in the operating room. Hawkeye dresses him down on it, telling him "without an audience, a patient means nothing to you."
• Hawaiian-Shirted Tourist: Hawkeye and Trapper in particular wore a lot of Hawaiian print shirts when not in something resembling an uniform.
• He Who Must Not Be Seen:
  • Sparky, the telephone operator at I Corps, was a constant fixture on the other end of Radar’s calls, but only appeared on-screen once, in the "Tuttle" episode. He was shown sitting at a switchboard, eating an apple and reading a Captain Marvel comic. He only got two lines of dialog, but judging from that, Sparky seemed to have a Southern drawl. The same scene revealed his real name (Sgt. Pryor) for the first and only time.
  • O'Brien, the chopper pilot. Like Sparky, he was referred to many times throughout the series (particularly in the first three seasons), but only was shown on-screen once, in "Dr. Pierce and Mr. Hyde", when a sleep-deprived Hawkeye tried to convince him not to fly around in his chopper anymore (figuring that if O'Brien didn't go up with empty stretchers, he wouldn't come back down with them occupied by bloody bodies).
  • Also, the camp's unnamed PA announcer, voiced at different times by Sal Viscuso or Todd Susman (who did appear once as Sergeant Baker in "Operation Noselift", though it was never established whether Baker was the PA announcer).
    • An interesting point with this is that sometimes it sounds like either Jamie Farr (Klinger) or Gary Burghoff (Radar) is providing that voice. Indeed, Jamie Farr is listed on IMDB as having been the (uncredited) announcer in the pilot.
  • The episode "Who Knew?" centers around a never-seen nurse who died stepping on a landmine while going for a late-night stroll following a tryst with Hawkeye, for whom she had serious feelings (unbeknownst to him). We do hear her voice narrating her diary, as Hawkeye reads it while preparing to eulogize her.
  • Captain Tuttle and his replacement Major Murdock. Justified in that neither actually existed in the first place.
  • Most of the characters' relatives back in the States, although we do catch fleeting glimpses of a few of them via photographs or home movies.
• Head-Tiltingly Kinky: In "Rally 'Round the Flagg, Boys", Col. Flagg—believing Hawkeye to be a Communist sympathizer—enlists Charles to try and find some incriminating evidence. Rooting through Hawkeye's belongings, Charles comes across one of his nudist magazines and subsequently reacts in this manner.
• Heartfelt Apology: Played with. In "Carry on, Hawkeye," Hawk is the last doctor standing as the camp is down with the flu. And now he has it too. Margaret shows genuine concern for his well-being, which leads to this exchange:
  Hawkeye: You really are, aren't you? (Beat) You know all those rotten little tricks I played on you?
  Margaret: Yes.
  Hawkeye: I'd like to get well and do them all over again.
  (gives a "gotcha!" expression to Margaret, who can't help but smile.)
• Heat Wave: Several episodes center around these, including "The Nurses" (Season 5), "The Merchant of Korea" (Season 6), "None Like It Hot" (Season 7), "No Sweat" (Season 8), and "The Moon Is Not Blue" (Season 9).
  • "A Smattering of Intelligence" (Season 2) is a subtler example: there's no actual discussion about the heat in the episode (which centers around a visit from Col. Flagg), but throughout there are visual cues including Hawkeye wearing cutoff shorts, Trapper in a tank-style basketball jersey, Henry trying to fix an electric fan in his office, etc.
  • Inverted by Cold Snap episodes such as "The Longjohn Flap" (Season 1), "For Want of a Boot" and "Crisis" (both Season 2), "It Happened One Night" (Season 4), "Dear Sigmund" (Season 5), "The Light that Failed" (Season 6), "They Call the Wind Korea", "Baby It's Cold Outside", and "Out of Gas" (all Season 7).
• Helping Another Save Face: Hawkeye finds Frank cowering when the camp is pinned down by a sniper. When Frank asks Hawkeye what he intends to tell Margaret. Hawkeye tells him that if they're both lucky, he won't run into her.
• Heroic BSoD: Hawkeye gets one in the finalé when a mother smothers her child when they're all hiding from an enemy patrol. Even worse, he feels that it's his fault; she did it after he told her they'd all get killed if she didn't keep the baby quiet.
  • A visiting surgeon (who had seemed cheerful and "as [sane] as any of us" - "that's what scares me," Hawkeye replies) suffers one in the middle of OR, walking out and wandering into a tent where he's found softly complaining that the blood won't come off.
  • Charles has an episode-long one when he is almost shot in the head by a sniper (he enters it upon seeing the twin bullet holes in his cap.)
• Heroic Sacrifice: Margaret's foot locker, at least, according to her report in one episode where she's trying to replace it. She actually blew a hole in it herself, using Charles' shotgun.
  • Mulcahy's actions in the finale can be seen as a (barely) averted one, since he left shelter during a bombardment to rescue a group of prisoners who had been left out in the open. He survives, but loses most of his hearing from a near-miss artillery shell.
• Heroic Safe Mode: The staff of the 4077th, and MASH units in general are this. No matter their antics, peculiarities, fears, and disagreements, as soon as the wounded arrive everything else is forgotten.
• Hero of Another Story: Sidney Freedman (who works mostly at the EVAC hospital in Seoul) and the staffs of the 8055th and 8063rd (Real Life MASH units, which would be mentioned and occasionally seen, and the members of which were supposed to be at least as crazy as the members of the 4077th). And the front-line aid station personnel. And the chopper pilots, ambulance drivers, etc.
  • Several of the patients, who are recognized as such by the doctors and/or their peers. Examples include the former football player who lost his leg, the Chinese-American soldier who had been wounded several times, and the homosexual soldier who had three Purple Hearts.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: Hawkeye and Trapper, and later Hawkeye and B.J..
• Hidden Heart of Gold: Charles Winchester.
• Hilarious Outtakes: See here, and here. The Martinis and Medicine DVD box set also includes a blooper reel as a bonus feature.
• Historical Domain Character: Douglas MacArthur makes a passing appearance at the 4077th at the end of "Big Mac", even saluting Klinger, who is dressed up as the Statue of Liberty.
• Historical In-Joke: In one episode, Winchester mentions his family having a summer place in Hyannisport, where a large "nouveau riche" family moved in next door and got on their nerves by playing "a perpetual game of touch football on their lawn". This is clearly a reference to the Kennedy clan.
  • During the final episode, a radio announcer mentions increasing hostilities in Vietnam, prompting Klinger to ask, "Where's that?"
• Hitler's Time Travel Exemption Act: In "The Long-John Flap", Henry has a water pitcher in his office that not only doesn't belong in 1950, it doesn't even look like something from 1972... 2002, maybe...
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Charles sets up Col. Flagg big time in "Rally 'Round The Flagg, Boys." Flagg is hell bent on nailing Hawkeye as a Communist sympathizer, so Charles plants a letter with the North Korean patient Hawkeye was treating indicating some sort of meeting. Hawkeye and two Koreans enter a tent, under Flagg's surveillance (Charles joins him), then Col. Potter enters (Flagg: "Caramba! The fish stinks from the head down!"). Flagg thinks he's about to bust a Leftist ring bent on destroying the U.S., but when he enters, he's found that he's interrupted a bridge game between Hawkeye, Potter, the Mayor of Uijeongbu and the Chief of Police of Uijeongbu.
  • In The Tag of "The Young and the Restless", Col. Potter has apparently accepted that Klinger truly believes he is in Toledo, so he calls him into his office to approve his Section 8 paperwork.  After going over preliminary information such as name, place of birth, mother's maiden name, and Social Security number, Potter asks "Rank?"  Klinger instinctively replies, "Corporal."  Potter gleefully cries, "Aha!  Gotcha, soldier!" and tears up the paperwork.
• Holding in Laughter:
  • "Quo Vadis Captain Chandler", Col. Flagg, in one of his typical paranoid rants, attacks Dr. Sidney Freedman in front of the MASHers, telling him that his "ploy" of not signing his loyalty oath to "get out of the service" (Flagg's interpretation of events, not based in fact) was very dumb, but that Sidney had met his match in Flagg. B.J. has to stifle his laughter at the Insult Backfire.
  • In another episode, Frank actually manages to land a successful dig in at Margaret. He tells Hawkeye and B.J. that there's an attractive nurse that he was considering asking out. Margaret suggests that the freckle-faced nurse "is a bit young" for Burns. Burns nonchalantly says, "I don't know. A little youth might be refreshing for a change." ^note Margaret being his go-to fling prior to her engagement that episode Hawkeye, sitting right next to Margaret, has to look away from her and cover his face so that she won't see he's about to burst out laughing at Frank's barb.
• Holiday Volunteering: During several Christmases, the 4077th hosts the children from nearby orphanages instead of getting blind stinking drunk as they would've done otherwise.
• Hollywood Atheist: Averted with Corporal Klinger, who at first seems to be a Catholic. Several seasons in Father Mulcahy catches Klinger praying. Mulcahy questions him, asking why he would do this, being an atheist. Klinger responds, "Gave it up for Lent." In other episodes, indications that he's a Muslim appear, for instance referring to Allah or saying he prayed that Allah would help Mulcahy.^note This doesn't necessarily make him a follower of Islam. "Allah" simply means "God" in Arabic, and is also used by Arabian Jews and Christians. In any case, he is always positively portrayed, if pretty eccentric.
• Hollywood Darkness: The "Major Fred C. Dobbs" episode has some outdoor "night" scenes that were clearly shot in the daytime with a dark filter over the camera.
• Hollywood Law:
  • Any time Frank brings charges against Hawkeye and crew, when Hawkeye is found "not guilty" of whatever it is Frank was setting him up for, Frank is never brought up on any charges for falsifying statements even when his actions could have led to Hawkeye's death.
  • When Flagg visits the camp in "Officer of the Day," he insists that Hawkeye prepare his patient so Flagg can take him to Seoul, where he intends to execute him for being a spy. Although spies may have been executed, it wouldn't have been for Flagg to do on his own.
  • Many of the stunts and hijinks pulled were incredibly illegal under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and would have brought serious consequences. Remarkably, accounts from real M*A*S*H staff suggest they and their colleagues often got away with worse, so it may be Truth in Television.
• Hollywood Tactics: Numerous, such as:
  • Jeeps being shot at with artillery (virtually impossible against moving targets with immobile artillery pieces) when shooting the occupants would suffice.
  • Hawkeye climbing down a rope to treat a wounded soldier in a foxhole, dressed as Santa, while under direct fire, rather than the chopper landing and taking off (as was developed in Korea before its extensive use in Vietnam).
• Homoerotic Subtext: Hawkeye knows exactly what he’s doing with treating his best friends like romances, answering “in all kinds of weather” with a smirk regarding a general asking if he and Trapper were together, and when a soldier asks if he and B.J. have wives back home, he responds like they’re the ones married.
• Honorable Marriage Proposal: Hawkeye likes making jokes to both Trapper and B.J. (within five minutes of meeting him) that he’s only getting married if someone gets him pregnant first.
  Hawkeye: [as Trapper is fastening his Santa belly and they both grasp the innuendo] You realize if my father sees this you’ll have to marry me.
  Trapper: I wouldn’t marry you for five dollars.
• Hope Spot: Lt. Col. Henry Blake is eligible for discharge in "Abyssinia, Henry", which would allow him to return to Bloomington, IL to be with his wife and family. He never makes it back, and he is killed when his plane is shot down with no survivors. The final scene announcing Blake's death was kept a secret from all of the cast except Alda, to evoke genuine sadness and shock.
• Hospital Hottie: Major Houlihan, as well as many of the various guest nurses Hawkeye tries to bed. Hawkeye is a case of Even the Guys Want Him, Trapper Really Gets Around, and B.J. is also tempted with a couple of Girls Of The Week.
• Hot Drink Cure: Defied when Hawkeye tries to convince the British medics not to give tea to patients with abdominal wounds because it can make things worse.
• Huddle Shot: Two in the opening credits, and one occurred in the "Point of View" episode.
• Humiliating Wager: In "The Joker is Wild", Hawkeye bets B.J. that he can't pull a prank on each of the major characters. When B.J. succeeds (sort of), Hawkeye has to stand on a table in the mess hall with his pants down and sing "You're the Top" to him.
• Hurricane of Puns: Every single episode.
• Hypercompetent Sidekick: Radar, at least until season six or so. In fact, he was the Trope Namer at one point.
• Hypocrite: Invoked in "Rally Round the Flagg, Boys." A patient named Basgall is enraged that Hawkeye tended to a wounded North Korean before his injured friend (as far as Hawkeye was concerned, the North Korean was wounded far worse than Baskall's buddy). During surgery, Basgall hurls epiphets at Hawkeye for being a communist sympathizer, to which Hawkeye snaps back and yells at him. For much of the rest of the episode, B.J. keeps telling Hawkeye about how he needs to control his temper and retain his sense of compassion and professionalism, but later when Basgall attacks Hawkeye, B.J. snaps and nearly strangles him.
  B.J.: (sighs) I notice I don't practice what I preach.
  Hawkeye: Yeah. And thank you.
  • This can be said of all the main protagonists of the first three seasons, as one of their primary objections to Major Burns was that he was cheating on his wife with Major Houlihan. These objections came despite the fact that both Trapper and Henry also had various girlfriends and one night stands nearly every episode, and they also had wives back home. Oddly, they are never called on the hypocrisy.
• Hypocritical Humor:
  • Majors Burns and Houlihan often displayed this in the early seasons. In the very first episode, they spy on Hawkeye necking with Lieutenant Dish....
    Houlihan: Sickening.
    Burns: Animals. [starts necking with Hot Lips]
  • In spite of his rank, Potter hates colonels, on the grounds that all they do is try to make as many points as they can to make general, so they can kick back and relax on their big fat rear echelons. Justified in that he has no intention of becoming a general; he plans to retire at the end of his tour.
  • A mild case occurs with Father Mulcahy, of all people. Frank had asked the Father to give a sermon on temperance. However, Mulcahy was uncomfortable with the subject ("The Prodigal Son" and "Turn the Other Cheek" being more familiar territory for him). Needing to calm his nerves, he has a drink from a bottle gifted to him by a grateful soldier. It may have been a case of it being some unusually potent stuff, or it may be that the good Father Can't Hold His Liquor, but the result was that Mulcahy delivered his temperance sermon while drunk.
  • In "Chief Surgeon Who?," one of Frank's charges is that Hawkeye never address him as "Major," as is presumably part of military protocol. But immediately after bringing this up, he flat out calls Henry by his first name.
  • In "5 O'Clock Charlie," Capt. Cardozo tells Hawkeye and Trapper that he promised his wife he'd never have a drink or touch another woman while he was in Korea. He immediately asks for a belt from the still and tells them he's got a date that night.
  • Charles mentions a debate in which he won a fountain pen, with the topic "Should the U.S. permit more liberal immigration?"
    Charles: I, of course, took the negative. My family has had trouble with immigrants since we came to America.
  • Another Charles example: he reacts with outrage to the suggestion that he might be the one sending the inspector general bad reports on Colonel Potter.
    Charles: There are no informers in my family. Winchesters do not spy. [Beat] We do, on occasion, hire them.
• I Choose to Stay: Of all people, Klinger in the finale.
  • Also an I Can't Believe I'm Saying This when he makes the announcement about this.
  • Margaret does this when the nurses are ordered to the rear when the line is pushed far enough south that the unit is in enemy territory.
  • Hawkeye and Margaret in "Bug Out" when they need to tend to a wounded patient.
  • Frank, after having a transfer approved and then being tricked into thinking that the area around the 4077 is filthy with gold.
  • Henry, in the episode "Henry Please Come Home", decides to give up his newfound life of luxury in Tokyo, in favor of returning to the danger and generally poor lifestyle of the 4077th.
• I Coulda Been a Contender!: Sergeant Billy Tyler in "End Run" was a college football player when he was drafted into the Army and, according to Radar, one of the hottest prospects around...until he lost his leg.
• Identity Amnesia: In "Quo Vadis, Captain Chandler?", a bomber pilot claims to be Jesus. Frank and Margaret think he's pulling a scam, but it turns out losing his identity was the only way he could escape his guilt about being a long-term bombardier.
  • "The Billfold Syndrome" involves an amnesiac soldier whose condition turns out to stem from guilt over his failure to prevent his younger brother's death while they served in combat together.
  • This is used by Klinger as a dodge one time. He attempted to convince everyone that he believed the 4077 was Toledo (he played off the wounded as him helping out the victims of a traffic accident). This almost worked — but, as always, he blew it at the last second.
• Idiosyncratic Cultural Gesture: Col. Potter quickly and correctly identifies a patient who cannot speak as The Friendly Texan when he offers up his hand, because as Potter says, "I haven't met the Texan yet who didn't offer up a handshake, no matter how many tubes were coming out of him."
• Ignorant About Fire: In an episode they were out of surgical gloves and were cleaning their hands with alcohol between patients. A small fire starts in a pile of discarded scrubs; Klinger notices, grabs a panful of liquid (thinking it's water) and throws it on the fire - only the fire grows bigger. He threw one of the pans of alcohol.
• I Have This Friend: Klinger tries to use this with Potter once. Potter sees through it immediately (probably because Klinger claims the "friend" is serving in a MASH unit in Toledo) and tells him to spit it out. Klinger admits that he's found evidence that the camp's newest nurse has a serious drinking problem.
  • Another episode has Sidney Freedman visiting the 4077 and Father Mulcahy coming to him, saying he has a friend who he's kind of worried about, because "things aren't going so well for him, and he's feeling a little low". When Sidney smiles and asks who the friend is, Mulcahy tells him it's him, Sidney (who has, in fact, been feeling depressed over a patient who blames him for getting re-injured). They then have a nice little therapy-for-the-therapist chat.
• I Know Karate: When administering innoculations, Major Burns, thinking a Korean boy stole his Purple Heart, warns him with "I've had two judo lessons". A few episodes later, though, he mistakes judo for a religion.
• I'll Take Two Beers Too: In "Divided We Stand", Henry offers a drink to a visiting psychiatrist who's evaluating the camp. The man declines, and Henry nervously hastens to add that he's not ordinarily much of a drinker. Then Radar enters with a couple glasses of brandy:
  Henry: Captain Hildrebrand doesn't care for any.
  Radar: Oh, then I won't bring his glass in.
• I'm a Humanitarian: In an early episode, Hawkeye feigns stress-induced insanity by sitting down to a delicious meal of liver. That he got from a North Korean. Who croaked.
• Imperial Storm Trooper Marksmanship Academy: North Korean and Chinese soldiers could never seem to hit any of the main characters when shot at on camera. The closest one came was putting a bullet through Winchester's hat.
  • Another notable example is a sniper who took several shots at two bottles of high-class scotch, eventually destroying both, then an ambulance's tire, and not actually hitting anyone.
  • There was also Five O'Clock Charlie, a bomber pilot with terrible aim. The episode "featuring" him had everyone in the camp betting on how badly he would miss every time he dropped a bomb. And judging by quality of equipment (a sputtering prop plane not even equipped as a bomber; he just lobbed them by hand) and pilot, his target (a nearby ammo dump) was very low on the North Korean target priority list.
  • A sniper shooting at Klinger and Father Mulcahy continuously hit the bell behind them, but never managed to actually hit them.
  • Even the tactics the North Koreans used failed miserably. When the North Koreans were shelling the unit, they never seemed to hit anything.
    • The shells would often drop into the center of camp or, on occasion, blow up boxes and such sitting around (and sometimes the latrine). How they missed the large central building with the big red '+' on top is anyone's guess.
  • Any time someone drove a Jeep somewhere, the North Koreans would attack it with artillery, not the best weapon to use against a single, moving target.
  • In the episode with General Stone, a sniper starts shooting at General Stone and doesn't seem to hit anything, not even the Jeep.
  • General Steele, after inspecting a swamp he wants to move the 4077 to, insists on being saluted despite the danger of tipping off any snipers. A sniper starts shooting at him, but never even gets close.
    General Steele: We can stand and fight...or we can have lunch.
    Blake and Burns: Lunch!
• Incessant Music Madness: In "The Smell of Music", Winchester's French horn aggravates B.J. and Hawkeye to the point where they refuse to bathe until he gives it up.
  • In "Your Hit Parade", Potter's insistence on repeatedly hearing "Sentimental Journey" nearly drives the rest of the unit over the Despair Event Horizon.
• Indirect Kiss: Trapper leaves Radar to give Hawkeye a goodbye kiss. Hawkeye thinks for a second and gives Radar a kiss back. Used for both pathos and a seventies show couldn’t get away with an actual/genuine Trapper/Hawkeye kiss.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: This is averted in one episode when Hawkeye, having sworn off alcohol for a week, orders a drink in the Officers' Club after a close encounter with a live grenade in OR, admitting that he flat out needs it after nearly getting blown up. He is just a few inches from drinking it when he decides that he would prefer to want the drink instead of need it, puts the glass back down, and leaves the club.
  • Colonel Blake frequently went straight to his liquor cabinet whenever he heard that trouble (usually in the form of a general) was coming his way. Come to think of it, he usually did the same thing even when it was good news, too.
  • Used subtly in "What's Up Doc?" upon Radar realizing that they have to kill his rabbit in order to do a pregnancy test on Margaret. While Radar loses it, a clearly exasperated Margaret grabs a bottle of liquor that Potter and Hawkeye had just been drinking from and pours herself a shot.
• Informed Ability: In "Period of Adjustment", we learn from Father Mulcahy that Radar was every bit as incompetent a company clerk as Klinger when he first arrived, and that Colonel Blake helped him learn the ropes. From what we saw of Henry's style of command, he must have really relaxed after Radar came into his own.
• Initialism Title: Of course, "MASH" is not exclusive to the fiction of the series. In the real world, Mobile Army Surgical Hospitals, like the one in which the series is based, are indeed referred to as "MASHes" or "MASH units". Their successors, officially titled Combat Support Hospitals, are still commonly referred to as "MASHes".
• Innocuously Important Episode: “Hawkeye” is played as a ramble from our favourite maniac, but includes references to a lot of things coming, the “illusion” that he’s loved with Carlye coming back, a Sadist Teacher with “Dreams”, his parents fighting, his declining sanity with how desperately he tries to hold on and his performance of being the “fun crazy”, fact that he was “mentally deficient” even in med school, and the masochistic streak where he praises people who hurt him.
• Insane Troll Logic: In "The Novocaine Mutiny," Frank (who is temporarily in command) hears Zale complain about losing 300 dollars, so Frank starts searching the entire camp to find the "stolen" money. Hawkeye and B.J. tell him that Zale's money wasn't stolen, he just lost it in a poker game. Frank says that's impossible because he has prohibited gambling, therefore there is no gambling in the camp, therefore the money was stolen.
  • In "The Abduction of Margaret Houlihan", Col. Flagg shows up "disguised" in an Italian Army uniform, a false mustache and MacArthur sunglasses. When Col. Potter asks him why he's dressed that way, Flagg says he's actually dressed as Ling Chow, a Chinese double agent. When Potter remarks that he doesn't look Chinese, Flagg replies, "Neither would Ling Chow if he were dressed like this."
  • A non-humorous example occurs in "Dr. Pierce and Mr. Hyde", when Hawkeye pleads with a chopper pilot to stop making pickups on the premise that, because the choppers go out empty and come back loaded with wounded soldiers, choppers going up are the cause of wounded soldiers. In his defense, he generally does know better, but his cognition is impaired by severe sleep deprivation at the time.
  • Another episode has Frank suggest that enlisted men, rather than officers, should be the ones to put themselves in mortal danger because they are given uniforms for free and officers have to pay for theirs.
• Insignificant Anniversary: Invoked in one episode, where Charles is, once again, in Potter's office to complain about his being at the 4077th, and once again, putting in for a transfer somewhere else.
  Charles: I hold you personally responsible for ruining my medical career. It has been six months, to the day, that I have been, "Shanghaied," into this quagmire.
  Potter: Then this a commemorative occasion; we'll issue a coin.
• Insomnia Episode: This happened with Hawkeye a few times. He was even ordered to go to bed and responded with "Not now, I need a little sleep."
• Inspiring Sermon:
  • In the episode "Change Day", the B-plot involves a large amount of money being stolen from a wounded serviceman. When Fr. Mulcahy finds out, he delivers a fire-breathing sermon on theft over the camp P.A. system, one that results in the thief anonymously returning the stolen money. Pleased with himself, he muses if maybe he ought to do more regular sermons over the P.A., perhaps "a commandment a week!". Hawkeye replies "I wonder if thou shouldst..."
  • In the episode "Blood Brothers", Father Mulchahy, in the midst of a Heel Realization, gives a powerful and moving sermon about serving others in the name of the Lord.
  Father Mulchahy: When the first man saw the dignity and the selflessness of the second man, he realized how petty and selfish he had... I... I... I had been. It made me see something more clearly than I've ever seen it before. God didn't put us here for that pat on the back. He created us so he could be here himself. So he could exist in the lives of those he created, in his image.
• Instant Drama, Just Add Tracheotomy: Mulcahy has to perform one of these when a patient he and Radar are transporting can't breathe; Hawkeye coaches him over the radio.
• Instrumental Theme Tune: "Suicide Is Painless", originally used (with lyrics) in the feature film.
  • The theme was rearranged several times during the show's run, albeit so subtly for the most part that the changes are hard to notice if you're not listening for them.
• Insult Backfire:
  Frank: Pierce, you're the most unmilitary man in this man's army.
  Hawkeye: Thank you!
  • In "The Joker Is Wild", as Hawkeye is reminiscing about the long-departed Trapper John:
    Hawkeye: Trapper was a man ahead of his time. Right, Margaret?
    Margaret: He was a ridiculous, juvenile child.
    Hawkeye: See?
• Internal Retcon: In one of the Christmas episodes, a mortally wounded soldier is brought into the MASH and B.J. tries his best to help him. He knows he cannot save the soldier's life, but B.J. tries to delay the man's death until after midnight because he doesn't want his kids to think of Christmas as the day their daddy died. But even with the help of Hawkeye and Major Houlihan, he fails, coming up minutes short of midnight—so Hawkeye walks over to the clock and moves it ahead so the doctors can say the soldier died on December 26th. Hawkeye, B.J., Margaret, and Mulcahy (who had come to deliver the Last Rites) decide to falsify the record and keep it secret, even though it is illegal, so they can give some small measure of comfort to the soldier's family.
• Interplay of Sex and Violence: Hawkeye likes making jokes like this, either to calm himself down or trying to rile everyone else up. The Foresight Saga has him tell Radar 2.0 (who just had his village bombed) that he’s lucky because Hawkeye’s had worse bruises from dates. B.J. forces a laugh.
• Invented Individual: Hawkeye, not wanting to take credit for the supplies he and Trapper give the orphanage, says they're from a Captain Tuttle. This eventually blows up into a whole thing, with Hawkeye and Trapper convincing the whole camp that there is a doctor stationed at the 4077th named Tuttle.
  • Truth in Television in this case: Tuttle is listed on IMDB as playing himself.
  • His "successor" Major Murdock also qualifies.
• Invented Invalid: Klinger tries numerous times to get out of the Army. In one sequence, he presents Henry with a letter from home saying his mother is dying. Henry pulls out Klinger's file filled with letters from home saying his mother is dying, his father is dying, his sister is dying, his sister is pregnant, his sister is dying and his mother is pregnant...and so on, until the capper: "Half of the family dying, other half pregnant."
• I Owe You My Life: Figures as a subplot in "Springtime" and "Operation Friendship".
• Ironically Disabled Artist: One episode had Charles treat a soldier who was a trained pianist, but his right hand was badly injured. Charles obtains sheet music written specifically for pianists with only a left hand (including the Ravel concerto), and spoke at length about Wittgenstein. The episode fades to black on the soldier very aggressively playing the opening solo of the Ravel, on the Officers' Club piano.
• Ironic Echo: At one point in the Grand Finale, Klinger asks Potter's advice on his being in love with Soon-Lee and how the idea is giving him trouble. Potter tells him, "When you're in love, you're always in trouble, so there's two things you can do: either stop lovin' 'em, or love 'em a whole lot more." Towards the end, when Klinger announces he and Soon-Lee are getting married and that he's staying in Korea to help her find her family, he concludes with:
  Klinger: The way I see it, when you love somebody, you've got nothing but trouble, so you either stop lovin' 'em, or love 'em a whole lot more.
  Potter: (buzzed) You know, that's very profound.
• Ironic Nursery Tune: In "The Kids", Radar sings a lullaby to one of the Korean orphans, and we catch a look of sudden shock on his face as he realizes what he's singing:
  "By-low, baby, by
  By-low, baby, by
  Daddy still loves you
  Though he's gone to war."
• I See Dead People: In "Follies of the Living - Concerns of the Dead", a sick Klinger is the only person to see the spirit of Pvt. Weston, a recently killed soldier. During The Stinger, the crew are happy to see Klinger well again, but are confused when Klinger asks of Weston, "Where is he? Did he get what he wanted?"
• I Take Offense to That Last One:
  Hot Lips: (to Henry Blake) Why don't you stop masquerading as a commanding officer? You're nothing but a spineless, mealy-mouthed, fly-fishing impostor!
  Trapper: He's not an impostor!
  Hawkeye: Right. He's a genuine spineless, mealy-mouthed fly-fisherman.
  Henry: (chuckling) Pierce, you're the limit.
• It Has Been an Honor
  • In the Grand Finale:
    • Hawkeye and B.J. give Col Potter a silent one by standing at attention and saluting him, something that they did very rarely for anyone, much less their CO, throughout the course of the series.
    • Major Houlihan tells everyone in the 4077th that it has been an honor serving with them.
  • Hawkeye salutes Radar in "Good-bye Radar (Part 2)" while in the operating room, as well as when presenting him his Purple Heart at the end of "Fallen Idol".
• It Only Works Once: You would think threatening to tell Frank's wife about Margaret would be an easy way for Hawkeye and Trapper to keep him in line, but they only do it once.
• It's Always Spring: While several episodes take place in winter, due to California Doubling none of them contain any snow and feature completely green plantlife.
  • In the early seasons, the green plantlife is averted by having all exterior scenes in winter episodes taking place at night. In later seasons, this was not always done (and wouldn't have made sense for some of them anyway). The increasing use of the sound stage exteriors instead of location shooting made it easier to avert this.
  • One of the Christmas episodes, "Dear Sis", does end with the beginnings of snow, naturally.
  • Klinger throws snow onto a sleeping Major Burns' bare feet at the beginning of "The Late Captain Pierce".
  • In any episode where the weather is supposed to be cold, the actors who are trying to pretend to be cold by bundling up and huddling around heaters and burning barrels, are obviously uncomfortable and sweating profusely, making it difficult to believe they're cold.
    • Such episodes were a Take That! from the writing staff. Whenever the writers got upset with comments and complaints from the cast about scripts, they would write a winter episode to make the actors miserable.
• It Was Here, I Swear!: Little Chicago, in the "Snap Judgment" episode.
• It Will Never Catch On: One episode has Klinger trying unsuccessfully to convince Winchester to invest in his invention—the hula hoop. (The stinger to the same episode has Winchester himself inadvertantly inventing the frisbee while discarding a pie plate.)
  • Hawkeye and B.J. spend months improvising a dialysis machine, determined to provide a superior alternative to peritoneal lavage for patients with kidney problems. Peritoneal dialysis is now the preferred treatment for kidney patients who are capable of performing the procedure; all it took was the invention of a plastic bag that could safely and cheaply hold dialysate fluid, so people could do it at home.
  • The "television fad" is mentioned on occasion.
• Ivy League for Everyone: Charles graduated summa cum laude from Harvard and Trapper attended Dartmouth. B.J. went to Stanford (non-Ivy, but of comparable prestige). According to "Adam's Ribs", Hawkeye seems to have graduated from the University of Chicago, a rather prestigious research school.
• I Want You to Meet an Old Friend of Mine: Jamie Farr was suggested for the (originally one-shot) part of Klinger after producer/director Gene Reynolds worked with him on F Troop, in which Farr played an Indian comedian named Stand-Up Bull, whose riff was basically ripping one Incredibly Lame Indian-Based Pun after another.
• I Was Quite a Looker: In "The Trial of Henry Blake", after the elderly Nurse Cratty testifies on Henry's behalf, an admiring Hawkeye leans over and tells her, "You're beautiful." She answers, "I used to be, sonny."

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