When the 4077th comes under artillery fire (again, from friendly positions), Col. Potter orders the patients and surgical teams to be moved into a nearby cave system for protection... much to Hawkeye's dismay, as it causes his claustrophobia to rear its head.
Attention all personnel, attention! Col. Potter has ordered the following tropes to be moved to this page on the double:
- Claustrophobia: The episode centers around Hawkeye having to deal with suffering from it.
- Face Your Fears: For both Hawkeye and Margaret, his claustrophobia and her brontophobia converging as a point of relation between the two. While neither overcomes their respective fear, they do bond over the experience.
- Mother to Her Nurses: Despite her brontophobia being in full swing from the shelling, Margaret refuses to allow one of the nurses to face the dangers involved in the return trip to the 4077 and insists on going herself.
- Fear of Thunder: Margaret hates loud noises, such as exploding shells. It helps her comfort Hawkeye concerning his claustrophobia.
- Friendly Fire: Outdated information leads to a nearby artillery unit shelling the 4077th. Again.
- I Heard That: Both Col. Potter and Charles utter this in different scenes. As Potter points out, the cave's acoustics allow even offhand remarks to be heard much louder than normal.
- Subterranean Sanity Failure: Hawkeye does not handle the move to the nearby cave very well.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Neither Hawkeye nor Margaret are 'cured' of their phobias by the end of the episode: Hawkeye got away from his due to the need to return to the 4077 to operate, and Margaret was forced to grit her teeth and bear it in order to assist in the operation, in contrast to other fictions where a single incident of facing the source of a phobia can allow a person to overcome it.
- Trust Password: The fire control officer asks Potter for the proper authentication code to prove he's really American. But the code book the 4077th has is outdated so the password is incorrect.Potter: He thinks I'm Chinese.Hawkeye: I don't see it myself.
