The “Cheers” food fight is hilarious both for its relatability — it’s a cathartic expression of all the bad holiday dinner feelings any of us have ever felt — and its real-feeling intensity. The thwack sounds of food making contact with skin become almost ridiculously loud, and at one point, a set wall begins to tremble from the impact of so many bodies being flung around. In a Hollywood Reporter retrospective from 2018, though, series co-creator Glen Charles said at least one element of the scene wasn’t real: the food itself.
“It wasn’t real food,” Charles told the outlet. “Real food wouldn’t have stuck on things.” Though the TV veteran didn’t give away the starchy secrets behind the fake Thanksgiving dishes, he admitted that they were pretty rank. “The combination of things we used caused the worst smell,” Charles said. In fact, the memory of that foul odor lingered on for the involved cast members, even decades later. “When I run into anyone in the cast they still comment on the smell,” he added. In a separate 2015 retrospective by Yahoo, Long recalled the smell as well, saying, “The smell of the food fight was unbelievable.” Director James Burrows, who noted his memory could be hazy on the details of the shoot, told Yahoo he did remember some real food on set and noted that “there was definitely a major odor.”