YMMV / Gunsmoke

The radio and TV show:

• Designated Hero: Matt, in the early seasons, was more likely to kill people with an Instant Death Bullet than arrest or at least injure them (though to his credit, he did try to make arrests, with many trying to kill him rather than submit to arrest), making him seem the "shoot first, ask questions later" kind of lawman. A widow of one of the perpetrators he gunned down calls him out on this in "Reward For Matt". He says he takes no pride in killing, but rarely shows shame.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Matt's constant greetings of "Hello, Kitty" become this thanks to a certain franchise that became a worldwide icon some decades after the show was aired.
  • A young Kurt Russell appeared in one episode. Series star James Arness was in The Thing from Another World and Russell would later go on to star in the remake The Thing (1982).
  • The actor Matt Dillon was indeed named after the Marshal from this franchise.
  • One of the early radio episodes features a rancher named Frank Reagan.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Aaron Spelling appeared in one of the early episodes as a guitar player.
  • A young Kurt Russell appeared in season 8.
  • Burt Reynolds was a long-running recurring actor on the series.
  • Erin Moran played two little girls by the names of Rachel and Jenny at age 10 before gaining stardom as Richie's little sister Joanie on Happy Days.
• The Scrappy: Some consider Chester to be almost completely useless when trying to help Matt on the job, which was odd seeing as Chester could be rather formidable on his own, as he proved numerous times against groups of bandits.
• Values Dissonance: "Yorky" shows a boy raised by Arapahoes being talked into integrating into a white community, or a "civilized" community, as Matt and Chester put it.

The comic

• Complete Monster: Jim Carr is an Amoral Attorney seeking to be the greatest cattle rustler in the West. To do so, he takes advantage of a village's tensions to create a range war so bad that "the range will run red." To do so, he murders some ranchers to do a Frame-Up for the other side. His original plan to kill a few more ranchers to start the war is complicated by the arrival of Gunsmoke. To speed things up, he kills the neutral sheriff, who happens to be his father-in-law, and tries to frame him as taking a side.
• Moral Event Horizon: Carr murders his own father-in-law so a range war he's masterminding gets bloody quicker.

The Video Game

• Awesome Music: The NES version has a different soundtrack, but the first stage theme, Town of Hicksville, is amongst one of the most favored NES tunes that existed and considered as the game's signature theme.
• That One Level: The Comanche village in both the arcade and the NES versions, for being the longest level in the game bar none.

---