History Series / TheDickVanDykeShow

** Millie Helper had "What are you talking about? What's he talking about? What are you talking about?" with no pause in between. She would occasionally insert other activities in place of "talking about"

* TheTalk: Rob gives this to Richie (offscreen) after Richie starts telling false stories about where babies come from. Richie accepts the truth of Rob's talk but decides to continue making up stories about "baby supermarkets."

* SincerestFormOfFlattery: A meta-example. In one episode Rob and his friend Sam Pomerantz (Henry Calvin) do a spectacular impression of Creator/LaurelAndHardy; in real life, Stan Laurel was Dick Van Dyke's self-confessed comedy hero.

** He is also a magnet for random flying objects, even those aimed at somebody else. In "When a Bowling Pin Talks, Listen", Alan Brady gets a pie in the face (not shown) when he appears on the ''Uncle Spunky'' show. In the final scene, he calls Rob, Buddy and Sally into his office with a fully loaded pie sitting on Alan's desk. It is clear that the pie is intended for Rob, who had suggested that Alan appear on the show, as retribution. Alan takes the pie and gets ready to throw it... right in Mel's face as Rob backs off just as Mel walks in to deliver some trivial piece of documentation.

* LaughingMad: Rob reacts this way when he learns that Milly had sent fourteen fake letters to Alan Brady praising him and Rob for a high-risk appearance on a cultural program (which hadn't aired yet):

* ClipShow: The [[GrandFinale series finale]], "The Last Chapter", has Rob presenting Laura with the manuscript his newly-completed memoir. As she reads, each chapter prompts a different memory represented by a clip from an earlier episode.

* NeverHeardThatOneBefore: In "The Man from My Uncle," Rob and Laura are visited by a government agent who asks to use their house to watch one of their neighbors, who is suspected of harboring his criminal nephew. The agent who actually performs the surveillance is named Harry [[Film/JamesBond Bond]]. First Rob, and then later Laura, ask him something like, "Oh, you mean like...", but he cuts them off, presumably because he's heard it a million times before.
** Although it's one of the show's infrequent references to '60s fads, the joke remained current 50 years later.

* YourTelevisionHatesYou: After the horror movie in "It May Look Like a Walnut" gives them both nightmares, Rob and Laura try to find something pleasant to watch on TV. On one channel, an announcer says they'll be showing ''[[Film/RoadTo Road to Singapore]]''.

-->My heart told me that I should get a wife\\
My heart told me I was in a rut\\
My heart told me I should get a wife\\
I wish my heart would keep its big mouth shut!

-->'''Rob:''' Honey, the door [to the bedroom] is jammed!
-->'''Laura:''' (on the other side) It's not jammed, it's locked.

** Laura does this in "Show of Hands", after she and Rob accidentally [[ItMakesSenseInContext dye their hands black]] right before going to a dinner being given by the C.I.U.
-->'''Rob:''' Laura, you know what C.I.U. stands for?

* TheKlutz: Robert Petry, courtesy of Creator/DickVanDyke's skill at slapstick.

*** '''Mel:''' It's my sister's house, and I'm welcome any time that Alan's not home!

* AmbiguouslyJewish: [[http://www.interestingideas.com/ii/rob.htm Some writers have observed]] that the Petries were the only unambiguous Gentiles in an otherwise all-ambiguously-Jewish (except for Buddy, who is clearly shown to be Jewish) cast.

* MistakenForCheating: Several times with several different couples. In one episode Rob thinks Buddy is having an affair with Sally, only to find that she and Buddy are actually sneaking off to [[TheCastShowOff perform a club act together]].

* BilingualBonus: In "The Impractical Joke", Buddy makes a crank call to a flower shop claiming to need cooking chrysanthemums for the "the Shah of Zolzein. That's right, the Zolzein Shah." "Zol zein shah" is Yiddish for "shut up." Judging by the absence of laughter, few people in the studio audience got it.

''The Dick Van Dyke Show'' was a classic and influential {{Sitcom}} that aired on Creator/{{CBS}} from 1961 to 1966.

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* RashomonStyle: In "The Night the Roof Fell In", Rob and Laura have a fight at the beginning of the episode which they recall quite self-servingly.

%%* PieInTheFace (please note an example of the trope before de-commenting it)
%%* PoliceLineup (please note an example of the trope before de-commenting it)

* RashomonStyle: "The Night the Roof Fell In".

%%* TheRashomon: "The Night the Roof Fell In".

%%* ExplodingCloset: with walnuts!
* ExtraEyes: In "It May Look Like a Walnut", an AllJustADream where everyone lives on walnuts and water ("getting a drink of fresh air") and grows eyes in the back of their heads.
%%* EyesDoNotBelongThere: see ExtraEyes above.

* {{Colorization}}: "That's My Boy??" and "Coast to Coast Big Mouth" were computer-colorized in 2016 and aired on CBS that year.

%%* PanickyExpectantFather: A hilarious example.

* NotImportantToThisEpisodeCamp: After the first season, Richie rarely appears unless he's essential to the plot of the episode. A Nick at Nite promo once described him as "Richie Petrie: Low-Maintenance boy."

%%* OneBornEveryMinute: The pool hustler.

Created and produced by Creator/CarlReiner, the series centers around television comedy writer Rob Petrie (Creator/DickVanDyke), who works in New York City and lives in [[{{Suburbia}} suburban]] New Rochelle with his attractive wife Laura (Creator/MaryTylerMoore), their cute son Richie (Larry Matthews), and brash next-door neighbors Jerry and Millie Helper (Jerry Paris and Ann Morgan Guilbert). Coinciding with the [[UsefulNotes/JohnFKennedy Kennedy]] "Camelot" era, which heralded a new age of youthfulness, ''The Dick Van Dyke Show'' reflected a break from the old-fashioned sensibility of previous television families.

* BorschtBelt: Buddy is from this school of comedy.

* ChristmasEpisode: "The Alan Brady Show Presents"

* ExplodingCloset: with walnuts!

* EyesDoNotBelongThere: see ExtraEyes above.

* GameShowAppearance: "Coast to Coast Bigmouth"

* HypnoFool: In the episode "My Husband Is Not a Drunk".

* IShouldWriteABookAboutThis

* JuryDuty: "One Angry Man"

* KissDiss: In the intro

* OneBornEveryMinute: The pool hustler.

* PanickyExpectantFather: A hilarious example.

* TheRashomon: "The Night the Roof Fell In".

* TheVonTropeFamily

* WeWantOurJerkBack

* ZanySchemeChicken: Rob's surprise birthday party

* ButtMonkey: Mel Cooley can't go an episode without getting an insult from Buddy (usually about his baldness). He gets it pretty bad from Alan Brady, too, whose every other sentence to him is some variant on "Shut up."
** He is also a magnet for random flying objects, even those aimed at somebody else. In "When a Bowling Pin Talks, Listen", Alan Brady gets a pie in the face (not shown) when he appears on the ''Uncle Spunky'' show. In the final scene, he calls Rob, Buddy and Sally into his office with a fully loaded pie sitting on Alan's desk. It is clear that the pie is intended for Rob, who had suggested that he appear on the show, as reparation. Alan takes the pie and gets ready to throw it... right in Mel's face as Rob backs off just as Mel walks in to deliver some trivial piece of doumentation.

** Everybody. Starting with the pilot, the show gave the cast members many opportunities to show off their singing, dancing and stand-up skills. Rob and Laura dance, Buddy plays the cello, and Sally sings.

* ChillyReception: In a flashback episode we find out that Sally and Buddy were initially none too keen on Rob, whom they had never heard of before, being hired as their boss. [[spoiler: He wins them over when he puts all three of their names on a sketch he came up with himself, after their sketch is rejected by Alan ("Yep. That's his crumple")]]

* DreamWithinADream: Occurs in "I'd Rather Be Bald Than Have No Head At All." Rob puts an anti-baldness preparation on his hair, then wraps his head in a towel and goes to sleep. He initially dreams that he has unwrapped his head to find his hair replaced with a head of lettuce. He wakes from ''this'' dream only to find that removal of the towel now shows him being totally bald. Finally, he awakens for real, revealing his hair to be intact. This makes the lettuce-head escapade a Dream within a Dream.

* TheExitIsThatWay: In the episode ''The Blond-Haired Brunette,'' when Rob and Laura begin having a heart-felt conversation, Millie hastily flees the room...right into the hall closet.

-->'''Rob:''' I tell you, I fooled her! She was ''entranced''! You know what she thought? She thought she was flirting...with a complete stranger...

* FidelityTest: Rob talks to Laura her over the phone in a different voice as a gag, but the deed transforms to this trope when he believes she believed she was flirting with a complete stranger. But she knows she wasn't.

* ImaginationDestroyer: In the episode "It May Look Like a Walnut", Rob and Laura watch a sci-fi movie where aliens use a walnut-like object to strip humans of their thumbs and imagination so they can't make things. Then Rob has a nightmare about the movie where the walnuts figure heavily and he ends up losing his thumbs and sense of humor much to his despair.
* ImmuneToMindControl: In the episode "My Husband is Not a Drunk" Buddy really can't be hypnotised, although he plays along for a couple of minutes. Rob however acts the HypnoFool.

-->'''Rob:''' Hi, Alan...Alan, they wouldn't do that!

* IrrevocableMessage: A script is accidentally turned in which has all their sarcastic comments about Alan Brady not blacked out, and they attempt to retrieve the script before he reads it.

** Averted - Carl Reiner always removed anything he considered to be too-current trends, fads or slang from scripts in order to prevent future reruns from becoming dated. Ironically, one of the only things that does seem slightly dated in modern viewings is the concept of a weekly prime time network VarietyShow itself.

* LongTitle: "The Sound of the Trumpets of Conscience Falls Deafly on a Brain That Holds Its Ears...or Something Like That!"
* LoveAtFirstSight: A flashback episode reveals that Rob fell in love with Laura within minutes of meeting her. Laura...not so much.

* ReallySeventeenYearsOld: When Laura married Petrie, she said that she was nineteen. She was really seventeen and hence too young to get married.

* SitcomArchNemesis: Buddy Sorell made every attempt to insult producer/ bald brother-in-law of the star Mel Cooley.

** In the episode "The Return of Happy Spangler," one of the sketches Rob writes for Alan Brady is a lecture on how modern comedy has become too sophisticated to resort to cheap slapstick for laughs-- during the course of which the speaker slams his hand in the desk drawer, gets his foot stuck in a wastebasket, stabs himself with a penknife, falls off the desk, and puts his foot through a chair.

** The episode "The Curse of the Petries" involves Laura getting the cherished gift of an old family heirloom from Rob's parents-- an enormous ugly brooch in the shape of the United States. Laura doesn't want to offend her in-laws, but hijinks ensue when she manages to drop it down the garbage disposal and has to try to get it repaired.

* GettingCrapPastTheRadar: This may not count as an actual example as it was entirely accidental (one of the episode's writers had heard his Jewish grandmother use the word metaphorically and didn't find out the actual meaning until she herself saw the episode in question), but the episode "Bupkis" (about a song of the same name) features prominent use of the word "bupkis," with characters claiming that it's "a Yiddish word meaning 'nothing'." "Bupkis" is a Yiddish word meaning "goat shit." (Hilariously, [[PopCulturalOsmosis bupkis would go on to enter wider slang with the meaning the characters in the episode insist on, because of the episode]].)

* TheTalk: Rob gives this to Richie ([[GettingCrapPastTheRadar offscreen]]) after Richie starts telling false stories about where babies come from. Richie accepts the truth of Rob's talk but decides to continue making up stories about "baby supermarkets."