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[[folder:A-L]]
* BizarroEpisode: The episode "The Changeling" is about a poltergeist invading the Walton home. No other episode features any overt supernatural elements (though "The Ghost Story" is ambiguous about a Ouija Board, and "The Grandchild" features the eerie appearance of St. Elmo's fire that may or may not have been unnatural) and this is never mentioned again.
* FanonDiscontinuity: The episodes in Season 9 where it is revealed that [[spoiler: Curt]] is still alive get this treatment.
* HarsherInHindsight:
** The worst offender of all, bar none, is the following example. In the season 2 episode "The Honeymoon," Esther has agreed to be a chaperone for children and is away while Zeb cares for the household while John and Olivia finally make good on a long overdue honeymoon. When she comes back home, Esther has [[PlayedForLaughs lost her voice]] from yelling at those rambunctious children too much and given herself laryngitis. Zeb is all too eager to joke that this is the first time she's been rendered speechless and he can finally get a word in edgewise. Halfway through the production of season 5, Ellen Corby had a devastating stroke that damaged her speech center and nearly rendered her mute. When her character comes back at the end of Season 6, Esther really ''[[PlayedForDrama can't]]'' speak coherently anymore and will '''never''' do so again, which leads to her character CommutingOnABus because there is precious little her character can contribute to the story without the ability to talk and interact without the demeaning presence of other actors conveying her actions for her like a baby.
** Every single time that Grandpa Zeb jokes about living to 101. He only made it a little over three-quarters of the way in the end.
** In "The Runaway," Jim-Bob runs away from home because he feels neglected. At one point, John and Olivia discuss how this isn't unusual behavior at his age and start to joke/worry that Elizabeth will want to run away when she gets older. Come season 9, Elizabeth ''does'' run away, but because of the ''[[{{Irony}} absence]]'' of her parents at home out of a desire to run away ''to'' them, as Olivia's tuberculosis has relapsed and John is caring for her in the hospital.
** In the earliest seasons of the show, the Walton children just about ''never'' wore shoes and were never the worse for wear because of it, as it was a [[BarefootPoverty staple of rural youth and childhood innocence]]. Near the tail end of the show in "The Hostage," when this has fallen away from commonplace and the Waltons all outgrew it, Elizabeth is forced to go without shoes without choice after being made to give them up as incentive to not run away from her hill folk captors, and badly suffers AgonyOfTheFeet when the slippers she stole from them don't cut it on rough terrain, leading her to suffer some nasty cuts of her own.
** [[spoiler:Curt]] was initially introduced after his actor played a one-off character, invoking the YouLookFamiliar trope. When [[spoiler:Curt]] returns in season 9, he is acting completely different from the man we knew him to be and even his wife can't recognize him. He's being played by an ''[[TheOtherDarrin entirely different actor]]'' who has a ''much'' meaner-looking face to match the [[TookALevelInCynic dark turn his character has taken]]. In other words, new [[spoiler:Curt]] is behaving like a total stranger because he really ''is'' a total stranger to the audience itself.
** Anything to do with Ben and Cindy's first child, Virginia, whom they love and adore so much. [[spoiler: In 1961, little Ginny Walton '''drowned''' and never had the chance to grow up, and when we pick back up with the couple in 1963, Cindy looks heavily aged from the sweet, jovial girl she used to be, and is nearly ready to die from grief, until Ben finally breaks down in tears with her and accepts the idea of adopting a child.]]
*** This becomes even worse when you realize, from watching "The Fulfillment," that the Waltons sometimes played host to orphan children to give them a glimpse of a real home. [[spoiler:Ben and Cindy actually went ahead with an adoption for real.]]
** During a checkup in "The Grandchild", Curt jokes to Flossie Brimmer, in one of her very last appearances, that she is fat. During the interim between this season and the next, her actor died, in part because she was too overweight.
** Esther had a habit of complaining about Zeb eating too much at the dinner table because she feared for his health. In "The Birthday," Zeb has a major heart attack right before his 73rd birthday and believes this is it for him, but he gradually recovers over a long series of weeks. At the start of season 7, we learn Zeb [[TheCharacterDiedWithHim recently died]] from a ''second'' heart attack climbing up Walton's Mountain by himself in his advanced condition. Even worse, this was immediately after Esther got the clearance to come home from the hospital, so one can only assume Zeb worried himself so much over Esther's condition that he wore himself to death, and when he let down from it all after she was back home, his aching heart finally gave out.
** Esther herself got sick in the season 5 episode "The Vigil", and nearly died, ending up hospitalized. Only a few episodes later, she suffered a bad stroke and ended up back in the hospital indefinitely, possibly brought on by this previous sickness.
** Seeing John and Olivia HappilyMarried from the get-go, yet how many mayfly romances the Walton children go through with [[OneShotCharacter characters of the week]] due to RuleOfDrama tearing them apart by the end of each episode, then finally landing the loved ones of their dreams much, much later, is a little tough in the first place. But it becomes harder to stomach when you research the real life actors and find that nearly all of the main cast either has at least one failed marriage to their name or else never married at all; this includes the Godseys. In other words, the happy, innocent TV family they all portrayed was a stark contrast to having real lives where nobody could have lasting happiness or reconciliation.
** Olivia's strenuous objections to "the recipe" could be considered this when you know that in real life, Michael Learned struggled with alcoholism.[[note]]So did Ralph Waite; in fact, she credited him with helping her get sober.[[/note]]
** ''Everything'' about "The Shivaree" becomes a relentless GutPunch when you watch it after seeing "The Loss".
** People respectfully call Mary Ellen a war widow after Curt gets caught in the Pearl Harbor attacks. [[spoiler:Turns out he's alive, but has been robbed of his reproductive capabilities as a result of the injuries he sustained, and became so downtrodden as a result that he changed his name, lost ''all'' capacity to care about others, and outright rejected his family. Following this, the people who know the truth pretend to call her a widow to cover up the blot of the impending divorce, until she remarries Jonesy.]]
** Olivia ends up miscarrying her youngest child because her body is too old to carry a fetus to term. This has multiple levels of sadness when the viewer knows that this was actually her ''tenth'' child - daughter Anne and son Joe (Jim-Bob's twin) both died at birth. Made even worse when Ben and Cindy [[spoiler:lose their first child to a drowning accident]].
** The very last story of ''The Waltons'' series takes place in 1969. In the pilot special, we learned from an older John-Boy's narration that this is the year John Walton Sr., his father, would die. Since Esther Walton is still alive for at least this story, it's possible that she outlived her son. That's bad enough, but then you remember that she already lost her ''older'' son, Ben, in World War I - she may have outlived both of them.
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[[folder:M-Z]]
* MemeticMutation: "Good night, John-Boy."
* {{Narm}}: Some of the slang from the thirties and forties has aged poorly. To those not around back then, it can sound incredibly corny and near-impossible to take seriously, with one such example being "rickety rax".
* NarmCharm: The companion book ''Goodnight, John-Boy'' reveals that this was deliberately invoked with the narrator. When the show's producers were trying to figure out who should narrate the opening and closing segments of the show, they decided to give the job to Earl Hamner himself (author of the original novel) because, as one of them put it, "no one can be as corny as Earl."
* NightmareFuel:
** "The Changeling" episode.
** "The Ferris Wheel," particularly during Elizabeth's sleepwalking bouts on the ''roof'' of the Walton house and the shocking twist where she remembers being trapped on a Ferris wheel at a tender young age. She was trapped because the Ferris wheel operator was a thief, who rushed to hide his stolen goods when he saw a police officer coming; as Elizabeth watched, he returned in time to be ''killed'' by a Ferris wheel carriage. She was so traumatized by the whole thing that she repressed the memories, until the return of the carnival caused them to resurface in her dreams.
*** This was also the last episode to feature Ellen Corby in coherent health, which makes it seem even more eerie.
* ReplacementScrappy: Olivia's cousin Rose and her grandchildren Jeffrey and Serena, in the final seasons, were seen this way by a large number of viewers. The kids were meant to be the new cute ones, since the youngest Waltons were teenagers, and Rose basically filled in for Grandma (and then also Olivia after Michael Learned left). The fans never warmed up to any of them, particularly the kids, whose tendency to frequently antagonize each other was a jarring change after watching the close-knit Walton children. They were eventually written off of the show; the kids went to live with their father, and Rose remarried.
* RetroactiveRecognition:
** Creator/JohnRitter played Reverend Matthew Fordwick for the first five seasons.
** Creator/SissySpacek played Sarah Jane Simmons in "The Townie" and "The Odyssey".
** Paul Michael Glaser played Todd Cooper in "The Air Mail Man".
** Gerald [=McRaney=] played Tim Collins in "The Book".
** Madge Sinclair played Minnie Doze in "The Visitor".
** Willie Aames played Danny Colby in "The Beguiled".
** Bruce Davison played Bob Hill in "The Shivaree".
** George Dzundza played A.J. Covington in "The Abdication".
** Creator/JackieEarleHaley played Tom in "The Emergence".
** John Walsh played Mr. Keats in "The Emergence".
** Melody Thomas Scott played Darlene Jarvis in "The Go-Getter" and "The Seashore".
** Todd Bridges played Josh Foster in "The Stray" and "The Illusion".
** Michael Conrad played Matt Sarver in "The Empty Nest".
** Alley Mills played Nancy in "The Obsession".
** Creator/JonathanFrakes played Ashley Longworth, Jr. in "The Legacy" and "The Lost Sheep".
** K. Callan played Nurse Corrigan in "The Waiting".
** Corbin Bernsen played Casey in "The Medal".
** Eric Stoltz played a senior boy in "The Valedictorian".
** Jennifer Jason Leigh played Kathy Seals in "The Pursuit".
* SeasonalRot: Season 9, notably the final season and the one where World War II comes to an end. At this point in the show, the elder generations of the core Walton family have all left the show except John and Rose, who also depart before the end, leaving just the children, who by this point are all grown up.
* SignatureScene: An exterior shot of the house as everyone wishes each other a good night, frequently ending with "Good night, John-Boy."
* TheyChangedItNowItSucks: Several fans dislike Season 9, mainly because of the different actor for John-Boy and the episodes that focus on the sons fighting in the war, because it drifted away from the innocence of the prior seasons. (Ironically, that ''was'' the point of airing those episodes - to portray how the war affected everyone.) Also, by this point, several of the original cast members had left or passed away.
** Thankfully, the reunion movies of TheEighties and TheNineties brought back Richard Thomas and the Walton elders as well as nearly every other original recurring cast member, invoked a refreshing TimeSkip to TheSixties, and injected a new level of drama into the show, as well as the shocking news that [[spoiler:Erin's crummy luck with lovers came back with a vengeance and her husband philandered his way to divorce, and that Ben and Cindy's baby Virginia had died in a drowning accident]], as well as the uplifting surprises that [[spoiler:John-Boy was ''finally'' getting married and Elizabeth and Drew rekindled their romance once and for all]]. They were faithful enough to the original that it brought back the old spirit of the show.
* ValuesDissonance:
** "The Romance" has Mary Ellen state that she wants to become a doctor rather than just a nurse as she originally planned, explaining that she believes she has the talent and drive to succeed. Instead of encouraging Mary Ellen, Grandma Walton disbelievingly asks her to name one female doctor. When Mary Ellen names several, Grandma says, "Well, hopefully, by the time you're grown up, that sort of thing will have stopped happening."
** Grandma also finds it shocking and incredible that Olivia would have the audacity to want to learn to drive a car and go places by herself. "Where do you need to go that one of the men can't take you?"
** The resolution of "The Violated" is a bit strange by modern standards. [[spoiler:Instead of the young woman's rapist facing justice, he's "persuaded" by John to leave town and never return... meaning that he could do the same thing to someone else.]]
** "The Victims" can also come across this way. Kenny, a neighbor, returns from the war, suffering from massive PTSD. DomesticAbuse ensues as he takes out his waking nightmares on his wife Laurie. The sheriff point-blank admits to her that law enforcement is generally reluctant to get involved with domestic situations, implying that it's considered too personal and private. The episode ends well, with Kenny receiving treatment at the VA hospital and once again becoming the gentle and kind person Laurie married; however, to modern eyes, the sheriff's attitude (and Laurie's reluctance to leave her husband even though she's ''terrified'' of him) can be difficult to watch.
** The subplot of “John’s Crossroad” involves Elizabeth spending more time outdoors with Grandpa, while showing disinterest in a boy named Lucas who has a crush on her. Olivia gets angry at her spending too much time outdoors, claiming that Grandpa needs to encourage her to be more like a girl. By the end of the episode, Elizabeth begins dressing in more girlish clothes, stops spending as much time doing outdoor activities, and suddenly starts liking Lucas despite showing dislike for him the whole episode. Everyone celebrates these changes. Nowadays, parents wouldn’t bat an eye at their daughter spending time outdoors and dressing in pants and overalls.
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