Running Gag / Mystery Science Theater 3000

MST3K has had many, some of which live on in the revival and spin-offs such as Cinematic Titanic and RiffTrax. Some began as callbacks to previous episodes, to the point where most individual episodes will have their own list — not to mention the host-invented Catch-Phrases. Notable bits series-wide include:

• When a flashback occurs and a child version of a character appears, Mike/Joel or one of the bots will proclaim "Jim Henson's _____ Babies", the blank usually being the name of the younger character. In Being from Another Planet, they even say "Jim Henson's Baby Babies".
• All angry mobs are actually large groups of Packers fans. ALL of them. Doubles as a Take That! when you remember that the cast and crew of the show are primarily Vikings fans. You can tell the pain of the cast after the Packers won the 1997 Super Bowl, as The Giant Spider Invasion has them all yelling drunkenly as the on-screen groups riot: "Packers won the Super Bowl! Yee-hoo!" while then shouting such phrases as "Free Mumia! Free beer!" and "U.S. out of North America! AND PACKERS!"
• Whenever a couple are arguing, Mike always responds with "Sure they argue, but the sex is great."
• Servo singing "I Don't Know How to Love Him".
• "No one will be seated during the breathtaking (insert mundane activity) scene."
• Servo belting out gravelly-voiced Tom Waits and Joe Cocker numbers, usually when the monster/murderer hams it up with their death throe performance.
• Any time a movie features primates, the riffing will inevitably include poop flinging jokes. When RiffTrax posted a YouTube video of Mike, Kevin, and Bill writing up jokes for Rise of the Planet of the Apes, longtime MSTies knew right away what the joke topic would be before they even watched it.
• References to Lost in Space. When a character is cornered and afraid, Crow will usually launch into shouts of "Keep away from MEEEE! Keep awAAAAY!" Similarly, when a character is ashamed or embarrassed: "Ohhh, the pain, the pain..."
• "It was Callahan! The big one! He did this to me!", when a particularly sleazy character appears.
• Whenever policemen show up, Servo will say "A'right, show's over folks, nothin' to see here" in an Irish accent.
• Whenever women are seen at work, there's a good chance everyone will start bantering in stereotypical Minnesota Nice old lady voices. There's no better way to describe it. "Ah, geez, work work work. That's all we do here, oh yah."
• Whenever goofy, lighthearted music is played, Joel will often cry out "It's the kookiest/nuttiest/wackiest (item) in town!"
• In Joel-era host segments, Crow is almost always the only one to see a ship approaching the Satellite, and Joel and Servo never listen to him when he tries to tell them because they're busy doing something else — playing a game, telling each other jokes or something of the like.
• Calling someone "you freaked-out maniac!".
• During the Mike era, any time that Bridget Jones (Mike's wife) plays a character, she is repulsed by Mike.
• The correct response to any character in a sci-fi film demanding something be switched over to analog is Mike claiming "It has a warmer sound!"
• If they're riffing a Japanese movie, it's likely a joke about Godzilla, Cram School or "super-violent porn cartoons" will come up... along with plenty of cracks about the alarming length (or, more accurately, lack thereof) of the shorts that grade-school-age Japanese boys always seem to be wearing in these movies.
• In two separate episodes, when images of a dark solitary room and/or a door knocker prop up, Servo comments “Ebenezer Scrooge”.
• Series-wide and easy to miss — over the course of various episodes across the series, Crow getting himself "wedged" under the stairs, under the bulkhead, under the desk, et cetera. In the Sci-Fi seasons, Crow is also heavily prone to falling from great heights.
• Dr. Forrester loves hamming it up with "I'm the god! I'm the god! I'm the gaw-haw-hawwwd!" and "I WILL KILL HIM!" The latter line is frequently quoted by Servo as well.
• Servo getting so confused and stupefied by something that his dome explodes.
• "SPAAAAAHHHK!", always done in an over-exaggerated William Shatner impression.
• Servo's increasingly irate "HE'S NOT MERRITT STONE!"
• "HI-KEEBA!"
• "__________ of the Ollllllld West."
• "SLEEEEEP!"
• "Da-ad?"
• References to The Wizard of Oz. Oft-used quotes include "I can't come back — I don't know how it works!" and "Yeah, and what about Scarecrow's brain?!"
• Whenever a film has to be censored for profanity, the bots will often respond to the silence gap with "Huh?"/"Hmm?" or mock the incomplete sentence. An example from the MST3K Academy Awards preview special, when they riffed As Good as It Gets:
  Melvin: Oh, Carol the waitress, Simon the... [silence]
  Crow: Why'd they bleep out "former guy from TalkSoup"?
• This joke:
  Crow: Where is Siegfried?
  Joel: Over here, Roy!
  Crow: Hello, Siegfried!
  Joel: Hello, Roy!
• "Can't you see what I'm trying to tell you? I love you.", whenever a B-movie monster puts his arms around a woman in a way reminiscent of Groucho hitting on Margaret Dumont.
• If the crew is able to make a series of linked riffs during the opening credits, they'll declare it "The [Insert Subject Matter] Sketch". For example, in the beginning of The Unearthly, they make a series of comments referring to the lives of the crew documented in various independent magazines such as Video Watchdog and Gorezone before Joel admits to reading Newsweek.
  Servo: The Fan 'Zine Sketch, ladies and gentlemen! Thank you!
• "It's a good plan _______/ It was a good idea to ______/ He/she was a nice woman/man ______"
  All: AT FIRST!
• Humming the M*A*S*H theme anytime a helicopter is shown. It gets to the point that they all agree to stop doing it.
• In Red Zone Cuba, "I'm Cherokee Jack!" and "You shove off!"
• Mike/Joel and the bots making joy buzzer sound effects whenever somebody shakes the hand of an Obviously Evil character.
• Spoofing Marlo Thomas/That Girl anytime an attractive brunette with a flip hairdo or some other big 1960s medium-length hairdo appears on screen — i.e., Mike blurting out "Oh, Donald" in The Wild World of Batwoman.
• Crying "Attica!" whenever someone is in a cell.
• Crying out references to Killdozer! whenever a bulldozer appears on screen, usually consisting of "It's Killdozer! Clint Walker, no!" (Clint Walker is a star in the film.) A Killdozer! reference also shows up in a RiffTrax short, "Join Hands, Let's Go!".
• "Oh, I hate to shoot a butt like that!" Used mostly in Season 1, particularly when riffing on episodes of Radar Men from the Moon.
• Whenever there's a Plot Hole or something confusing that the movie doesn't establish very well, Crow or Tom will ask what's going on, only for Mike to chuckle and respond with "I don't..."
• A running gag in some episodes is Joel or Crow saying "My boss!" in a gruff voice and going on to talk about the crazy stuff he does, a reference to the Harts' butler/chauffeur Max in Hart to Hart.
• "Does this bug you? Does this bug you? I'm not touching you."
• Especially in the earlier episodes, Joel often reaches up and pretends to touch things on the screen. Similarly, Servo often kisses at the screen, since he's often positioned near a character's lips.
• When missiles are laying horizontally and then moved into an upright position, Joel/Mike and the robots start saying "Good Morning!" back and forth to each other.
• When characters peer around a corner, Joel/Mike/Jonah and the robots will harmonize "Hellooo... Helloooo... Hello!" one after another in the style of The Three Stooges making an entrance.
• Beginning in the second national season, every time something is happening outside the satellite, they ask for Cambot to give them "Rocket Number 9!" to bring up the exterior view.
• Joel and the Bots all shouting "Ford Beebe! Ford Beebe! Ford Beebe!" whenever his name appears in a film or short's credits.
• Either Joel, Mike or one of the bots (usually Servo) shouting "Stay alive! Whatever may occur!" or some other variation of the waterfall scene from The Last of the Mohicans whenever the hero is about to be separated from his love interest.
• Confusing James Franciscus with Tony Franciosa... and vice versa.
• In Rocketship X-M, whenever Lloyd Bridges appears, Crow cracks "And by this time, my lungs were aching for air!" (alluding to Bridges' narrative on his syndicated show Sea Hunt). It becomes a repeated riff in later movies, often during underwater scenes, until Joel makes Crow stop using it. Variations will still sometimes pop up, such as "By this time, my lungs were aching for booze!"
• If a movie has a wobbly credits sequence or narration card, Crow inevitably gets motion sickness.
• Counting in a dumb tone of voice: "Duhhhhh..... one. Duhhhhhh..... two. Duhhhhh... three..."
• Variants of this appear in a lot of episodes: "We've secretly replaced their regular coffee with Folgers Crystals, let's watch."
• Gypsy's obsession with Richard Basehart.
• The crew took a real shine to the song used in The Giant Gila Monster, and several characters hum "I sing whatever I sing whenever I sing" in episodes after that one.
• Any time a horse is on screen, jokes made on its behalf will be done in Mister Ed's voice.
• Adding the Benny Hill theme to scenes (by singing it themselves).
• In Riding with Death, Sam Casey (upon saving another from some unsavory types) asks "Who were those turkeys?" The entire remainder of the film's riff is filled with turkey jokes, culminating in Crow declaring himself "Turkey Volume Guessing Man", able to guess the volume of any space in the number of turkeys it can hold.
• Over a shot of an atom bomb exploding: "[Insert Republican here]'s first day as President", an old joke from the MST live shows later carried over into Cinematic Titanic.
• "My mother's a saint!"
• Comments on how huge cars were in The '40s and The '50s.
  Mike: [in The Violent Years] They're standing up in that thing!
• "...Bang!", after the many, many instances of Artistic License – Gun Safety.
• "MITCHELL!"
• "But Hooker's a good cop!"
• Whenever a man and woman are together and one makes a lame joke: "We're a fun couple."
• "He tampered in God's domain."
• "Watch out for snakes!"
• "It stinks!"
• " Time for go to bed!"
• "Chief!?" "McCloud?!"
• When someone is shot from a low angle: "I'm huge."
• "I thought you were Dale!
• "You're soaking in it!"
• "I like it very much!"
• "He tried to kill me with a forklift! — Olé!"
• "Rowsdower!"
• "We're havin' an adventure, just like the Goonies!"
• "Jane, stop this crazy thing!"
• "_____ was arraigned in Los Angeles Superior Court. In a moment, the results of that trial."
• "Mannix!" "Da-daa-da-da!"
• Turns out there were a whole lot of Samuel Beckett lookalikes in movies from the mid-20th century.
• Whisper-thin, willowy-hipped lads.
• "Aaaand I'm spent."
• "Well, what do you know?"
  All: [in unison] Not much, you?
• "Pretty niiice!"
• "Aren't these [people/places/stables/haybales/ambushes/etc.] phony?"
• A subtle one in season 11: from episode 1102, Cry Wilderness, to episode 1107, The Land That Time Forgot, all of Kinga's ideas for Invention Exchange are stolen from some riff that Jonah and the bots made in the previous episode. When Jonah calls her out on it, she stops.
• Kinga hoping to make the show a ratings hit and sell it to Disney, forgetting that Netflix doesn't use a traditional ratings system.
• Jonah likes practical effects and will often take the time to point them out and try to explain them, much to Tom and Crow's irritation.
• The Return's cast is very fond of "I'm so excited! I'm so excited! I'm so... scared!" from Jessie Spano's caffeine pill-fueled addiction meltdown in Saved by the Bell.
• "Mmmyeesss?", as popularized by Frank Nelson's omnipresent clerk/waiter/lawyer/etc. in The Jack Benny Program.
• Channeling the Diceman: "Little Miss Muffet! OHHH!"
• Over any reasonably idyllic scene: "It's like a Thomas Kinkade painting — horrible..." Also an example of Bait-and-Switch.
• If a movie takes a lot of time to show something (at least hypothetically) cute lumbering around at a slow pace, Jonah likes to start humming the Baby Elephant Walk.
• "Look familiar, Mike?" is a surprisingly versatile gag. Usually, it'll have something to do with a man in an awkward and embarrassing situation, but in Devil Doll, when the puppet is about to attack Vorelli with a knife, the bots tell Mike that "it will" look familiar. Sometimes, there will be a pretty woman involved, but the joke then becomes: "Look familiar, Mi— oh, who am I kidding?"
• Whenever a character reaches into their coat pocket, (usually) Crow will exclaim "He's got a gun!"
• Whenever someone is pitching an opportunity, one of the crew will suggest that it's for Herbalife.
• "Diarrhea is like a storm raging inside you..."
• The infamous, oft repeated reference to the "Joe Namath Netted Slingshot Brief". It never existed in real life and probably came from some strange misremembering of an old panty hose ad staring the famous New York Jets quarterback and some made-up silliness... and it certainly would've fit his ostentatious persona.
• A fictional porn movie titled "Yards of Leather", which was a thing in earlier seasons, a gag in a similar vein to the above "Joe Namath" one.
• "Skipper!" "Little buddy!" "Skip-perrrrr!"
• "I had Jello today..." tends to pop up whenever a very elderly character or a character who clearly isn't all there mentally appears.
• Scenes of a character using a flashlight will prompt Tom and Crow to say "It's the NBC Mystery Movie". Joel eventually had to resort to shock therapy to make them swear off that riff.
• Likewise, if there's a scene involving policemen or police cars, Joel will often make jokes about cops and doughnuts. The 'Bots ultimately make him sign an affidavit to stop using such jokes.
• If a group of people (often intending to hurt or kill) suddenly barge into a room: "SURPRISE! Happy birthday to you!" and also occasionally "Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!"
• Monsters will often be made by the crew to say that they come in peace, only to be immediately cut off when killed.
• If an actor appears and is well-known for specific roles in their careers, many of the riffs will be making fun of their fame, and especially if they keep appearing in multiple movies. Examples include mocking Bela Lugosi's accent as Dracula, references to Gilligan's Island when Alan Hale or Russell Johnson (the Skipper and Professor) are present, and the many Biography riffs made towards Peter Graves.

---