History WMG / MASH

** Addressing a popular chaplain as "Padre" is a US military tradition that dates at least as far back as World War One, possibly earlier, and is not unheard of in the British Army, either. It's a detail establishing Potter as an OldSoldier and indicating that Mulcahy is a good Chaplain (troops will only call a chaplain "The Padre" if they like him).
** Klinger ''does'' look a little bit like Romero.

*** Yet Hawkeye does nothing to actually ''remove'' it from the camp, he just prevents it from being used again, despite being given a list of artillery units who would be more than happy to accept it. And, despite it be ''his'' gun, he for some reason feels the need to sneak around at night to disable it, as if he weren't allowed to do anything with it or if it was actively being used by an artillery unit. And Hawkeye ''didn't'' want to remove it from the camp in the first place; Potter had to order him to get rid of it, and Hawkeye fought him the entire time.

* When the doctors go to do a prisoner swap at Rainbow Bridge, Hawkeye and Trapper try to befriend the enemy and seem at-ease with the North Koreans and chastise Frank for disliking them. This gives the impression that Americans with guns are bad, but North Koreans with guns are okay.

* Alternately, it's not the 70s at all: it's actually a test being done in the future, far enough ahead that they don't actually know the difference between '70s culture and '50s culture. They were (will be) using different sets of clones with the same sets of memories, and the same "title" for each character- Hawkeye for the happy-go-lucky manic-not-depressive surgeon, BJ for his PutOnABus partner and BJ for his replacement, Burns for the belligerent thinks-he-knows-it-all, Houlihan for the snarky love interest. Two of the same O'Reilly series clones (Radar) happened to be used for the groups of the movie and the television series.

[[WMG: Colonel Flagg is really [[TheDCU Rick Flagg Senior]].]]

[[WMG:Radar is a [[Franchise/{{X-Men}} Mutant]].]]

[[WMG: Loose was pregnant when she and Frank got married]]

Now, in Fawlty towers, there is a running gag on how Mr. Fawlty was in the Korean War and how he "killed four men". One time Sybel tells a customer "he was in the catering core, he used to poison them." and Mr. Fawlty often complains of painful shrapnel in his leg...

*** Klinger implies a few times that his family is Muslim (various references to Allah stand out), although Mulcahey once references him as an athiest.

The proof? The overly lengthy war...the even lengthier hairstyles not in fashion in this universes' 1950's...the surprisingly modern views towards women and minorities...the lack of smoking in later episodes....the lack of military discipline or order...and the relative lack of friction between the Korean population and the characters.

Just like ''Series/{{Life On Mars|2006}}'' and ''AshesToAshes'' provide purgatory for Coppers, so the 4077th gives a place for those army doctors and corpsmen who have seen too much to work out their issues and move on. That is why it is a mishmash of 50s-70s stuff.

*** Gee, it's not like they could, you know, ''''move'''' to a different location. This is supposed to be early in the war, when M*A*S*H units were ''exceptionally'' adept at mobilisation and could move at practically a moment's notice. It was only after the battlelines stablised and the need to bugging out decreased, resulting near disasterous attempts in late 1952-53 (the comments in earlier seasons about spending considerable amounts of time in one location, and acting as though moving to a new location was completely foreign to the camp are totally inaccurate).

**** An ammo dump located in the vicinity of a medical unit does not stip that unit of its protected status. Charlie was bombing the dump regardless of what collateral damage he caused, and the DPRK was not concerned with international regulation (they executed chaplains on capture and their snipers used the Red Cross painted on medics' helmets to aim).
* Hawkeye steals a literal gallon of antibiotics and four dozen bedsheets and wastes both in a deliberate attempt to aide the enemy in destroying an allied munition depot.

*** Hawkeye seems vehemenly opposed to releasing her before interrogation is even ''mentioned'', and the only proof we get that Mako tortures prisoners is a rumour and hearsay at best by someone with the 4077, and we never get any real confirmation.

*** This falls apart when one remembers that Hawkeye wasted a literal gallon of antibiotics in "Five O'Clock Charlie", in a deliberate attempt to aide the enemy. It's also strange that he would stop Flagg from gathering information that could prevent bloodshed, doubly so when one considers the penicillin would be used on patients being treated in a far lower standard of care than that afforded by the 4077.

But regained it later. He claims to be an Atheist in one episode, but later he is seen praying. Father Mulcahy commented on the peculiarity of this and Klinger sardonically responded he "Gave[Atheism] up for Lent". My guess is that when he was drafted, Klinger Prayed desperately not to be sent to Korea but was denied this. Thus, he lost faith. But after accepting his life and becoming friends with Mulcahy, he eventually regained it which is why it was never mentioned after the first few seasons.

* If you look at the show through the lens of the actual state of U.S. politics in the early 1950s (rather than the 1970s when the show was made), it's likelier than you may think that Hawkeye and friends are communists or at least fellow travelers. At that time, U.S. politics was still divided between an internationalist left and an isolationist right. As during World War II, the Korean War was supported by the internationalist left and opposed by the isolationist right. Left-wing opposition to the Korean War was largely limited to the sort of radical progressive circles in which Stalin was regarded as a hero of the working class. Of course, this is really an illusion caused by the show putting 1970s politics into the early 1950s.

[[WMG: Series/FawltyTowers exists in the M*A*S*H universe]]

[[WMG: There are multiple MASH universes]]

[[WMG: Colonel Flagg appeared in disguise in the episode Deal Me Out]]
Colonel Flagg was a self proclaimed master of disguise and CID man. In the episode Deal Me Out a CID man, played by Edward Winter, appeared and played Poker with several people including Sydney Freedman. In the episode Quo Vadis, Captain Chandler, Flagg asked Freedman, "Didn't we play poker once?" Flagg wanted to survey the 4077 in Deal Me Out, hence the disguise.

[[WMG: The 4077th is a 1970s zone in 1950s Korea.]] Think of ''The Brady Bunch Movie'' and how the Bradys were still stuck in the '70s during the '90s. Well, ''M*A*S*H'' is the same thing, but in reverse. It's the 1970s at the 4077th, but everywhere else it's still the 1950s.

[[WMG: The 4077th is trapped in a GroundhogDayLoop]] This explains why years keep repeating. It also provides an explanation for the above theory: the 4077th went through so many permutations that they advanced onwards to the 1970s, leaving the rest of the world back in the 1950s.

[[WMG: It's all a psych test]]

[[WMG: Series/{{Mash}} and ''Series/TheXFiles'' are set in the same continuity, and either Bill Mulder or the CSM was Major Flagg (Ed Winter's character) from M*A*S*H]]

Also, it is common knowledge that ''M*A*S*H'' and ''Series/TheXFiles'' [[http://poobala.com/crossoverlist.html take place in the same universe.]]

Further similarities between the X-Files and M*A*S*H include:

[[WMG: Colonel Flagg is actually Creator/StephenKing's Flagg]]
Problem is, his usual methods of sowing chaos for The Red King only work on people who take themselves too seriously, like the weaker minds in TheStand and Franchise/TheDarkTower, or Frank Burns. He was forced to resort to the oft-cited temporal whammy on the medics, but it left his form in the MASH universe in a state of growing increasingly caricature-like. Like faith for those in TheStand, and like ka for those in Franchise/TheDarkTower, the 4077th's sense of humor broke the Walkin' Dude's power there.

[[WMG: Colonel Flagg is [[TheDCU Rick Flagg Senior]].]]

[[WMG:M*A*S*H takes place in an alternate universe where the Korean War lasted for almost 9 years longer than it did in the is reality.]]

[[WMG: Radar is a chameleon-arched timelord]]

[[WMG: The 4077th is purgatory for army medics]]

At some point during the series, the 4077 was in fact bombed and destroyed by enemy planes. The attack happened nearly instantaneously, and thus the staff of the doomed field hospital didn't realized they had been killed and continued on in a purgatory of sorts. The souls of Henry, Frank, and Radar eventually discovered the truth and moved on, thus their exits from the show. Trapper John actually survived the bombing but was in a coma for awhile until he awoke in a hospital in Japan. Sherman Potter, Charlies Winchester, and B.J. Hunnicutt were all killed in other separate incidents but their souls were drawn to the spectral 4077 and became part of it's world. Many of the patients the 4077 received after the bombing were other souls fallen soldiers who they were unknowing helping to move on to whatever afterlife they were supposed to go to.

*** Klinger implies a few times that his family is Muslim (various refereces to Allah stand out), although Mulcahey once references him as an athiest.
**** I always figured Klinger's family was Lebanese Orthodox, which refers to God ass "Allah" due to the Arabic language.

He changed his name and hid his heritage to avoid prejudice when he joined the army. He admits that he was underage when he joined so he would have needed a fake birth certificate anyway. Potter frequently uses Spanish idioms in conversation (such as calling Father Mulcahey "padre," grew up as a southwest cowboy (a heavily Hispanic occupation,) and in one episode Klinger even says he looks like Ceaser Romero.

* When a wounded female guerrilla is treated at the camp, a South Korean officer known for torturing prisoners (played by {{Mako}}!) comes to the camp to take her when she is ready to travel, Hawkeye refuses to believe she could possibly be a guerrilla, even after she tries to kill a wounded US soldier (albeit found by the staff collapsed by his bed, with the unit of blood smashed on the floor) and when the officer spells it out that her life meant more to Hawkeye than it is to her, he still refuses to believe him, even attempting to evacuate her, disobeying orders from both Potter and I-Corps that he was not to interfere, yet he identified a group of Koreans as guerrillas in ''Welcome to Korea'' when they vanished into the woods and started firing on him, BJ and Radar.

*** Gee, it's not like they could, you know, ''move'' to a different location. This is supposed to be early in the war, when M*A*S*H units were ''exceptionally'' adept at mobilisation and could move at practically a moment's notice. It was only after the battlelines stablised and the need to bugging out decreased, resulting near disasterous attempts in late 1952-53 (the comments in earlier seasons about spending considerable amounts of time in one location, and acting as though moving to a new location was completely foreign to the camp are totally inaccurate).

**** It's not that Hawkeye didn't want to get rid of it. He did want to, but he refused to give it to an artillery unit that would just use it to hurt people. This troper always thought that after they sabotaged it, he did give it to another unit. Add in that he was sneaking because it's ''not'' his gun. The gun belongs to the army.

*** How does surrendering to a single sniper allow them to treat wounded? And Henry was ordered specifically not to surrender. And how, exactly, were they supposed to know it was just a single soldier with a captured rifle, and not a larger force ready to attack the camp? And the sniper fired at Hawkeye when he tried to surrender (against orders), so again, how does surrendering help?

**** Hawkeye is a devoted doctor. He takes very seriously the Hippocratic OAth, which states "First do no harm." He doesn't think of this as just when he's doctoring, but as a philosophy of life.

"Bug Out" is the first appearence of Eileen Saki, who plays a prostitute before playing Rosie.

Wendell reveals to Hawkeye that he lied about his age by stealing his brother Walter's identification. When Hawkeye alerts the authorities of this, he steals Frank's Purple Heart and gives it to Wendell, who was ineligible because he had appendicitis and was not injured as a result of combat. Identity theft is a serious crime, and now Wendell has a stolen award that Margret and Frank will almost certainly report.