Trivia / M*A*S*H S3 E24: Abyssinia, Henry

• Enforced Method Acting: The scene announcing Henry's death wasn't in the scripts distributed to the actors, to prevent foreknowledge leaking into their performances and ensure that they acted like people who didn't know what was coming. The actors weren't shown the pages for that scene until after all the other scenes were in the can. (It's sometimes claimed that all or most of them were kept in the dark until actual filming of the scene began, and that the camera captured their genuine reactions to hearing the news for the first time when Radar's announcement was made, but this is inaccurate: all the main cast members were given the script, and an opportunity to get their initial reactions out of the way, before filming the scene—which was just as well, because Larry Linville's reported initial response^note  "Fucking brilliant." would have been unbroadcastable anyhow. In any case, the scene as broadcast is actually the second take, since the first was considered unuseable owing to technical issues, meaning everyone in it has heard the announcement at least once before.)
• Throw It In!: Radar and Henry's final, emotional farewell at the chopper pad was never a part of the script. As McLean Stevenson put it, you just can't write emotion.
  • When the bad news is given at the end of the episode, someone is heard dropping something that falls to the floor with a hard clatter. This was purely accidental, but the creators left it in as they believed it was actually a nice touch to the heartbreaking scene.
• Probably more Fan Fics have been written about this than any other episode. Most find a way to save Henry (often taking the "I'm okay, I'm okay" clip from the Cher show as inspiration), some explaining that his death was faked by Army Intelligence and he couldn't contact anyone from the 4077th until after the war. Others just take it as given that he really is dead and depict how his former colleagues coped with it.

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