When Hawkeye starts sneezing uncontrollably, Colonel Potter eventually suspects it's psychological in nature and calls in Dr. Freedman.
Attention, all personnel, Captain Pierce appears to be sneezing in response to the following tropes:
- Freudian Slip: Sidney suspects Hawkeye's story about Billy was a revision in his memory when Hawkeye tells him Billy "helped him into the water".
- Mood Whiplash: The first half is played like a Compressed Vice episode, with everyone annoyed at Hawkeye's (loud) sneezing. When they're all gathered in Potter's office unsure of what the reason could be, Hawkeye comes in looking wrecked and panicking he's going to die.
- Trauma Button: Hawkeye is astonished that in the middle of a raging war, something that sparks a bad memory from when he was 7 years old would incapacitate him.Hawkeye: You know what's funny? Here we are in the middle of all this shooting... and-and I get laid out by something that happened to me in a pond when I was seven.
Sidney: Oh, sure. It's the little battlefields — a pond, the bedroom, the schoolyard — that can leave some of the worst scars.
