History Series / DadsArmy

* CampGay: Reverend Farthing shows signs of this; in "Time on My Hands", he tells Hodges that he got the idea to fire an arrow attached to a silk thread attached to a piece of twine attached to a rope that the stranded Home Guard can use to climb down from the Town Hall clock from a fairy story, and Hodges sneers "I expect you know all about fairies."[[note]] Actor Creator/FrankWilliams said in interviews that he played Rev. Farthing as if he were in the closet.[[/note]]

** 1971 - "Battle of the Giants", where the platoon is challenged to a test by the Eastgate platoon, with Hodges, the vicar and the verger as judges. They seem unlikely to win and their chances worsen when Jones has a bout of malaria.

** 1976 - "The Love of Three Oranges", where the vicar organises a bazaar to which each member of the platoon donates something. Hodges donates three oranges, rare due to wartime rationing. Mainwaring is determined to buy one of the oranges for his wife.

** Walker's girlfriend Edith, also known as Shirley (but played by Creator/WendyRichard regardless of what her name was), vanished from the show after Walker was PutOnABus following his actor's untimely death.
** Also happens to [[ShooOutTheNewGuy Private Cheeseman]]. The character got a mixed reception and was seen as the ReplacementScrappy in the wake of Creator/JamesBeck's death. WordOfGod also stated that some of the other actors, especially Creator/JohnLaurie, felt that Cheeseman was getting too many laughs. He disappeared after series seven without any explanation.

** Miss King vanishes almost without a trace after Series 1, (probably because her inclusion was purely because of ExecutiveMeddling), with the only reference to her afterward coming from the Series 4 episode, "A. Wilson (Manager)?", when she is briefly mentioned by Pike in an off-hand line of dialogue in Mainwaring's office.
** Also happens to [[ShooOutTheNewGuy Private Cheeseman]]. The character got a mixed reception and was seen as the ReplacementScrappy in the wake of Creator/JamesBeck's death. WordOfGod also stated that some of the other actors, especially Creator/JohnLaurie, felt that Cheeseman was getting too many laughs. He disappeared after series seven without any explanation.

* AdaptationalNiceGuy: In the original series, Mrs. Mainwaring is a profoundly unpleasant person who makes her husband's life a misery. In [[Film/DadsArmy2016 the 2016 film]], she's a gruff but ultimately good-hearted character and she and George, while often bickering, do actually care about each other.

* BorrowedCatchphrase:
** In "The Lion Has Phones", an army officer demands to know why Mainwaring believes the inhabitants of a stranded German plane will surrender in two hours. Wilson, rather than explain that [[spoiler:the reservoir the plane landed in is being filled and the Germans will be under water in two hours]] simply replies that "See the fact is they do not like it up them."
** Near the beginning of [[Film/DadsArmy2016 the 2016 film]], we see Hitler borrow the lines from the title song.
---> ''Who do you think you are kidding, Mr. Churchill?''
** Also in the 2016 film, Mainwaring borrows Jones' "Don't panic, don't panic" when breaking the news that a Nazi spy is in Walmington.

* ChekhovsGun:
** In the episode "Battle of the Giants", Walker mentions having made flags for both their platoon and the Eastgate platoon. They will be used at the end of a contest, in short form, whoever flies their flag first, wins. Although just a passing remark, it turns out later that Walker made both flags say "Walmington-on-Sea" so they would win whoever flew the flag first.
** In [[Film/DadsArmy2016 the 2016 movie]], the mention by Walker's girlfriend that Rose Winters's dress is Chanel. [[spoiler:This leads the men to the discovery that she is the Nazi agent they're looking for - Cissy and Dolly Godfrey contacted the Chanel company, who confirmed that Rose is a regular customer from Berlin.]]

* HistoricalInJoke: In [[Film/DadsArmy2016 the 2016 film]], after the group are tricked into [[NiceJobBreakingItHero destroying Britain's invasion force]], the General in charge (Creator/IanLavender in a RemakeCameo) admonishes them, saying that now they have to move their invasion back to June, when it happened in real life.

* HonestJohnsDealership: Private Walker's black market goods include plenty of items of dubious quality; in the first episode, he sells a watch to a fellow Home Guard member with the stock "waterproof, shockproof" spiel given by hundreds of dealers in stolen or counterfeit watches in film in television.

* PhonyVeteran:
** Captain Mainwaring had a habit of exaggerating his military service.
--->'''Mainwaring:''' I served in France ''[quietly]'' during the whole of 1919.\\

** This trope is also invoked in [[Film/DadsArmy2016 the 2016 movie]] when Jones reveals that he doesn't actually have any combat experience, having served in the Army's ''catering'' section in the Sudan campaign, the Boer War and WWI.

* ImpromptuFortress: In "The Battle Of Godfrey's cottage" due to a misunderstanding Captain Mainwaring is left believing the invasion has begun, and that the majority of the platoon are out of Warmington-On-Sea. Having only Jones and Frazer (as well as Godfrey as he later discovers) to hand and realising they have no hope of repelling any invasion force on the beaches, they resort to setting up an improvised base at Godfrey's cottage due it being in a key strategic point on the main crossroads out of town, hoping they will be able to at least hold the invading Nazi's off long enough for General HQ to organise a proper counterattack (and them all openly acknowledging they will certainly die in the process). This leads to them setting up the Lewis gun out the living room's window, and resort to using Godfrey's pillows filled with crockery as makeshift sandbags.

* KarmaHoudini: Frazer mistreats Godfrey when he is revealed to have been a conscientious objector in WW1 and knocks Pike's cake out of his hand. At the end of the episode Frazer claims to have been on Godfrey's side all along and suffers no repercussions.

** Corporal Jones also tends to get subject to a lot of physical humiliation over the course of events. Similarly to Pike, he was actually played by one of the younger actors despite the character's age, meaning he could safely be subjected to a lot more physical comedy.
** Hodges also suffers his fair share of misfortune, though in his case it's because [[KickTheSonOfABitch he's so annoying the audience would no doubt approve]].

** Miss King vanishes without a trace after series one, probably as her inclusion was purely because of ExecutiveMeddling.

** Private Bracewell, a character who appears only in the first episode. WordOfGod has it that Bracewell was intended to be a recurring character but was cut because the producers felt his character was too much like Godfrey's.

** John Laurie as Private Frazer. The actor was somewhat bitter about being best remembered for this role rather than his theatrical work (not that this stopped him from cashing his pay cheques for the series).

* FrozenInTime: The series started in 1940, went through 1941, and then 1942 [due to the inclusion of American troops in the episode 'My British Buddy']. Justified, in that after 1942 it became increasingly clear that the Germans weren't going to win, Britain wasn't going to be invaded, and there was less overall need for the Home Guard.

** In one episode, an army officer demands to know why Mainwaring believes a stranded German pilot will give himself up any minute. Mainwaring, in no mood to explain that [[spoiler:the reservoir he landed in is being filled and the German will be under water in ten minutes]] simply replies that "It seems that they really don't like it up 'em."

Other significant characters were the rather effete local vicar, Timothy Farthing (Creator/FrankWilliams), whose church hall the platoon made use of; the pompous verger Maurice Yeatman (Edward Sinclair), who tended to act as Hodges' fawning lackey; Mrs. Pike (Creator/JanetDavies), Pike's neurotic and overbearing mother who was heavily implied to be having an affair with Wilson; Private Sponge (Creator/ColinBean), another member of the platoon who would often be called upon whenever a supporting role was needed; Mrs. Fox (Creator/PamelaCundell), an overbearing local lady "of a certain age" with a bit of a thing for Corporal Jones; and Captain Square (Geoffrey Lumsden), the commanding officer of the nearby Eastgate platoon with a rivalry towards Mainwaring.

** Private Cheeseman (played by Talfryn Thomas) was added to the cast in Series 7 after the death of Creator/JamesBeck, but David Croft and Jimmy Perry thought he was "irritating without being funny", while Creator/JohnLaurie, who had already cornered the "eccentric Celt" role in the series, resented the number of funny lines Cheeseman was given, so he was quietly dropped for Series 8.[[note]] Although Croft claimed that he liked Cheeseman in at least one interview and dropped him mostly because of Laurie's complaints, and he and/or Perry evidently liked Talfryn Thomas enough to cast him in the ''Series/HiDeHi'' episode "Stripes".[[/note]]

Other significant characters were the rather effete local vicar, Timothy Farthing (Creator/FrankWilliams), whose church hall the platoon made use of; the pompous verger Maurice Yeatman (Edward Sinclair), who tended to act as Hodges' fawning lackey; Mrs. Pike (Creator/JanetDavies), Pike's neurotic and overbearing mother who was heavily implied to be having an affair with Wilson; Private Sponge (Colin Bean), another member of the platoon who would often be called upon whenever a supporting role was needed; Mrs. Fox (Creator/PamelaCundell), an overbearing local lady "of a certain age" with a bit of a thing for Corporal Jones; and Captain Square (Geoffrey Lumsden), the commanding officer of the nearby Eastgate platoon with a rivalry towards Mainwaring.