1. The guy who didn’t want to be Mike Brady

Brady Bunch dad Robert Reed had been was a thorn in producer Sherwood Schwartz’s side since Day One. He always maintained that he’d only signed his Brady Bunch contract because the pilot was lame and it wouldn’t get picked up as a series. The show had also been described to him as a serious look at blended families. Instead, the serious dramatic actor who’d trained at London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts found himself “trapped on Gilligan’s Island with kids.”

2. A very reluctant Radar

Gary Burghoff appeared as Corporal Walter “Radar” O’Reilly in every episode of the first three seasons of M*A*S*H. By season four, he was disenchanted with the direction his character was taking. He’d started out as crafty and sneaky, and not adverse to helping himself to Colonel Blake’s brandy. But the writers eventually turned him into a naïve farm boy who never sipped anything stronger than a Grape Nehi. Burghoff only appeared in about half the episodes over the next three seasons, and the CBS brass convinced him to stay long enough to play the focus of a two-part send-off during sweeps week in season eight. M*A*S*H writer Ken Levine notes that Burghoff partially expressed his disenchantment during his last appearance by refusing to wear his “Radar hat” during those final episodes, making him look less like the twenty-something company clerk he was playing and more like the balding, middle-aged man he was.