Mystery Science Theater 3000 callouts often involved references to movies, television shows, commercials, and other things in popular culture which the writers expected people to recognize. Since MST3K ran (scripted) from AD 1989 through 1999, and since people tend to assume that most people recognize things they experienced as universal, and since the writers were adults at the time MST3K started, and since people remember things since they were about five years old, this means that the writers tended to reference things from, roughly, 1965 through 1999. That’s not quite accurate, though, since in the 1970s and 1980s re-runs of television shows were quite common. So the references tended to be of things, roughly, 1960-1999. Since I grew up in the 1980s, I get a lot of these references, but there are also plenty I don’t get. And it can be very interesting to look these up.

For example, in Manhunt in Space there was the callout:

“Hazel, will you cook up something for dinner?”
“OK, Mr. B.”

Each was done in a voice that was not the host’s, especially the “OK, Mr. B,” so it was clearly a reference. I threw “Hazel OK Mr. B” into google and discovered that there was a TV show called Hazel which ran from 1961-1966. It was based on a single-panel comic strip of the same name and starred Shirley Booth as the eponymous Hazel. She was a live-in maid for the Baxter family and referred to Mr. Baxter as “Mr. B.” The comic strip upon which it was based was created by a man by the name of Ted Key in 1943. The strip finally ended in 2018. (Key was born in 1912 and died in 2008.)

Looking it up on YouTube, it looks like it was a funny show:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2JnDOhEO5o