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M*A*S*H (television) (view source)

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* [[Acronym Confusion]]: [[Invoked]] by Colonel Flagg.
{{quote|I'm with the CIA, but I tell people I'm with the CIC, so they think I'm with the CID.}}
* [[Adaptation Distillation]]: The movie itself [[Composite Character|combined two characters to create Major Burns]]. The show removed the character Duke Forest altogether, and Ugly John and Spearchucker Jones [[Chuck Cunningham Syndrome|disappear without explainationexplanation]] later on in the first season. Painless Pole, the camp dentist, seems to be an exception, since he shows up from time to time throughout the series.
** Painless is more of an [[Unseen Character]], being mentioned but rarely if ever actually appearing. The only dentist actually shown on screen who was stationed at the 4077 appears in one episode, completely paranoid about being injured in the last few hours before he goes home. (He does get injured, crashing the jeep as he's driving out of camp because he insisted on driving the jeep himself instead of allowing his assigned driver to do it.)
*** Painless shows before, to put a crown on Blake's tooth in ''Major Fred C. Dobbs.''
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* [[Christmas Episode]]: Several. More, in fact, than there were actual Christmases during the war.
* [[Chuck Cunningham Syndrome]]: Spearchucker Jones (dropped from the series after the makers learned that there's no evidence that any black doctors served in Korea), Lt. Dish, Ugly John, Sgt. Zale.
** 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 other doctors. For more information search "the Memoirs of Harold Secor".
* [[Claustrophobia]]: Hawkeye, in "C*A*V*E"
* [[Clip Show]]: "Our Finest Hour"
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* [[Confess in Confidence]]: There have been at least three episodes where Father Mulcahy learned of an issue from a confessing soldier and had to figure out how to solve it without breaking the seal of the confessional. One involved a black marketer who had stolen critically needed medical supplies, one a soldier who swapped dog tags with [[Retirony|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.
** Also note that in the case of the dogtagsdog tags, 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.
* [[Continuity Drift]]: A fair amount in the early seasons. Hawkeye signed a letter "love to Mom" but it was later revealed that his mother was dead; the writers couldn't keep the name of Henry's wife straight; at one point Margaret stated her father was dead, but he showed up alive and well on an episode years later. Granted, Margaret was very drunk in that scene, but one would still expect her to remember which of her parents were living.
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* [[Failure Is the Only Option]]: Klinger trying to get a Section 8, Burns trying to instill military discipline, Winchester trying to get a transfer.
** Winchester seems to play on his awareness that his exile to the 4077th was permanent at the end of the episode where his and Radar's families got together. On hearing they were planning another one, he asserted that it didn't matter, they "...can invite the ''goat''. It doesn't matter, for I shan't be here; I'm turning myself in to the Chinese."
* [[Fake Nationality]]: Due to a dearth of Korean actors in Hollywood at the time, most of the featured native Korean speaking parts were played by Asians of different ethnicities. Klinger's girlfriend/wife Soon-Li was played by actress Rosalind Chao (second-generation Chinese-American); Japanese-born actor [[Mako|Mako Iwamatsu]] played a Chinese Army officer, a South Korean Army surgeon, and a North Korean soldier; and Japanese-American actor Noriyuki "Pat" Morita played South Korean Army Captain Sam Pak.
* [[A Father to His Men]]: Colonel Blake, to Radar; Colonel Potter, to ''everyone''.
* [[Faux Yay]]: Hawkeye tries to get leave by pretending to be romantically interested in Burns.
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* [[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 champianchampion rodent.
* [[Flanderization]]: Radar's naïveté and Frank Burns's jerk-assedness both grew more and more pronounced as the show progressed.
** In early episodes, Frank cared about people. He tried to help when a little boy runs into a minefield. Linville played his distress as genuine, not faked or selfishly motivated. And he was occasionally able to hold his own against Hawkeye and Trapper, particularly in the prank war that involved the [[Bucket Booby Trap]] mentioned above.
** The early Radar was sly, far from naivenaïve, and a [[Psychic Powers|fully functioning telepath]]. (In one of the first episodes featuring Hawkeye writing a letter home, Radar reacts angrily to an insult that Hawkeye makes in his mental monologue/narration.) He did ''not'' own a teddy bear.
* [[Fox News Liberal]]: Winchester is a conservative version.
{{quote|(to a HUAC shill): I come from a family that would make you look like a New Dealer.}}
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* [[Heat Wave]]: "None Like It Hot", "No Sweat"
* [[Heroic BSOD]]: Hawkeye gets one in the finale when {{spoiler|he witnesses a mother strangle her child at a checkpoint.}} Even worse, {{spoiler|it turns out that it's ''his'' fault; she did it after he told her they'd all get captured if she didn't keep the baby quiet.}}
* [[Hero of Another Story]]: Sidney Freedman who works mostly at the EVAC HostpitalHospital in Seoul and the 8063rd M*A*S*H, members of which would be mentioned and occasionally seen who are supposed to be at ''least'' as crazy as the members of the 4077th.
* [[Heterosexual Life Partners]]: Hawkeye and Trapper, and later Hawkeye and BJ.
* [[Hey, It's That Guy!]]: Numerous actors who would go on to bigger and better fame appeared on the show.
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{{quote|'''Henry:''' Captain Hildrebrand doesn't care for any.
'''Radar:''' Oh, then I won't bring his glass in. }}
* [[Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy]]: North Korean and Chinese soldiers could never seem to hit any of the main characters when shot at on camera. A partularlyparticularly jarring example was Hawkeye being air dropped to a pinned -down foxhole to perform surgery on a wounded soldier, on Christmas, ''dressed as Santa'', slowly climbing down a rope to the foxhole, [[Hollywood Tactics|rather than the chopper landing then taking off, thus being exposed to enemy fire that much less]].
** Hawkeye was actually in a sort of sling hanging from the chopper, which was thus able to deposit him on the ground without having to land itself, saving time over that option. BJ once attempted to descend by rope from a hovering helicopter under fire to get to a wounded soldier in an area where there was no landing place, but was stopped by the pilot (and was forced to cut the rope and abandon the wounded man, as they didn't have enough power to lift him out to a location where they could land).
** Another notable example is a sniper (later revealed to be a very scared, and even more confused, kid barely old enough to draft) who took several shots at two bottles of high-class scotch, eventually destroying both, and never being known to have actually shot any people.
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* [[Instant Drama Just Add Tracheotomy]]
* [[Instrumental Theme Tune]]: "Suicide Is Painless", originally used (with lyrics) in the feature film.
* [[Invented Individual]]: Tuttle, the former [[Trope Namer]].
* [[I Owe You My Life]]: "Operation Friendship".
* [[It Has Been an Honor]]: In the finale Hawkeye and BJ give Col Potter a silent one by standing at attention and saluting him, something that they did very rarely throughout the course of the series.
** Hawkeye salutes Radar in "Good-bye Radar Part 2", while in the operating room to top it off.
* [[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 plantlifeplant life.
** In the early seasons, the green plantlifeplant life 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).
** Although one of the Christmas episodes, "Dear Sis", does end with it beginning to snow in camp, [[Dreaming of a White Christmas|naturally]].
* [[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 inadvertantlyinadvertently inventing the frisbee while discarding a pie plate.)
* [[Ivy League for Everyone]]: Charles graduated ''summa cum laude'' from Harvard and Trapper attended Dartmouth. BJ 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.
* [[Juggling Loaded Guns]]: gun fanatic Frank Burns. He frequently shot himself, and at one point, he accidentally shot BJ, for which he was relentlessly mocked.
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* [[The Klutz]]: Private Paul 'Look out below' Conway.
* [[The Lancer]]: Trapper, and later BJ, were basically this for Hawkeye.
* [[Last Rites (trope)]]: Father Mulcahy is frequently seen administering the last rites to dying and dead soldiers. We rarely get to see him do more than begin the process, though, but it's clear that it's the Anointing that he's performing, not the Viaticum -- if only because he's usually performing it on an unconscious soldier.
* [[Laugh Track]]: Employed over the objections of the producers and at the [[Executive Meddling|insistence of the network]], though averted in the O.R. scenes (and averted entirely for certain episodes). Also not used in foreign syndication. The DVD allows the viewer the option of having the laugh track turned off if they so choose.
* [[Limited Advancement Opportunities]]: Only Klinger and Father Mulcahy get promoted (though Burns makes Lieutenant Colonel after his departure). Radar also received a [[Status Quo Is God|temporary]] promotion.
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* [[Real Life Writes the Plot]]: "Preventive Medicine" was originally scripted to have Hawkeye and BJ falsely diagnose a gung-ho Colonel with appendicitis and then remove his (healthy) appendix, to keep him from resuming his command and getting more soldiers needlessly killed. However, Mike Farrell objected, believing the removal of a healthy organ was wrong and could ''never'' be justified. Alan Alda felt that removing a reckless, dangerous man from command in order to save lives ''was'' worth it. Their argument was actually written into the episode.
* [[Really Dead Montage]]: "Abyssinia, Henry"
* [[Really Gets Around]]: Hot-Lips, Hawkeye, Trapper.
* [[Really Seventeen Years Old]]: There's a kid (played by Ron Howard) who lies about his age to get into the army; Hawkeye catches him and sends him home.
{{quote|'''Kid''': I'll hate you for the rest of my life!
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** Charles Emerson Winchester III was possibly named after a fellow Bostonian, founder of Emerson College, Charles Wesley Emerson.
** Sherman Tecumseh Potter is one for William Tecumseh Sherman.
** Klinger's early [[Running Gag]] of wearing womenswomen's clothing in an unsuccessful bid to be declared insane and win a Section 8 discharge is loosely based on a similar scheme by [[Lenny Bruce]] to get thrown out of the Navy by dressing up as a WAVE (or women's naval auxillaryauxiliary) during [[World War Two]].
*** Klinger even obliquely lampshades this with a reference to an uncle using the same trick in WWII (and his family periodically sending him things from his uncle's WWII wardrobe).
** Klinger often expressed his support of two real-life institutions in his hometown of Toledo, Ohio: the Mud Hens (a minor-league baseball team) and Tony Packo's Cafe (a hot- dog restaurant).
* [[The Shrink]]: Sidney Freedman
* [[Shirtless Scene]]: Any scene in the showers. Depending on the actor, this was either [[Fan Service]] or [[Squick]].
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** Happened to Klinger once too, except he regained his hearing by the end of the episode. {{spoiler|Mulcahy didn't.}}
*** {{spoiler|he did in the spinoff.}}
* [[Stiff Upper Lip]]: Explored: In one episode, the 4077th is treating wounded from a British unit. Their Captain walks around, telling the men how they'll soon be back in action, after handing out cups of tea to the wounded in the field. Hawkeye asks him how he can be so callous about his men's lives, even risking killing some of them by giving tea to those with abdominal wounds. The British captain explains that he is speaking about going back into battle soon to give the men the impression that things aren't as bad as they seem, and that it wasn't known on the frontlinesfront lines that giving tea to treat abdominal wounds could cause complications, and promises to stop the practice immediately.
* [[Stock Footage]]: Aside from the opening sequence, all the bugout footage of the camp being torn down. In the finale, you can even see Radar!
* [[Strawman Political]]: Frank Burns, but that's okay since [[Rule of Funny|he was damn funny]] that way.
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