BoJack Horseman

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
This page needs visual enhancement.
You can help All The Tropes by finding a high-quality image or video to illustrate the topic of this page.


Back in the '90s, I was on a famous TV show. I'm BoJack (BoJack the horse), don't act like you don't know...

BoJack Horseman is a 2016 Netflix animated adult cartoon created by Raphael Bob Waksberg. It ran for six seasons, ending in January 2020. Will Arnett plays the title character, while Aaron Paul plays Todd Chavez, Allison Brie is Diane Nguyen, and Amy Sedaris is Princess Carolyn.

Once upon a time, back in the 1990s, BoJack Horseman was on top of his game. He was the lead in a sitcom Horsin' Around, playing a foster dad called The Horse to three adorable orphans. Oh it wasn't Ibsen, as his mother Beatrice told him, but it paid the bills and made him famous.

It is now the 2010s, twenty years later. BoJack hasn't done anything huge since Horsin' Around though the revenue has earned him a fancy Malibu house. He spends his days drinking, yelling at his roommate Todd to pick up his shit, and cheating on his on-off girlfriend and agent, Princess Carolyn. Then he realizes he's overdue on a deadline for his memoirs, and the publisher Pinky Penguin is so desperate that Pinky hires a ghostwriter, Diane Nguyen. Diane surprises BoJack by asking for his real story, rather than the Blatant Lies that he had a happy childhood. Maybe he can be a good person, by opening up to her.

Of course, the show is not all about BoJack, though he would like it to be. We follow the rest of the cast's quests to find their place in the world, and make something of their life. Diane balances a shallow romance with the cheerful celebrity Mr. Peanutbutter, who wants to make her happy but does not understand her, with her desire to correct injustices. Princess Carolyn has to manage BoJack and keep a steady array of clients as a shark in the agency business, while desiring true love, and kids. Todd wants to prove that he is more than a daydreaming slacker, but he needs to find a Zany Scheme that actually has some legs and can earn him a steady living. And Mr. Peanutbutter? He wishes to enjoy life with the woman he loves, and win BoJack's friendship. Surely he will never find out that BoJack is developing feelings for Diane, despite the fact that she doesn't reciprocate the horse's infatuation.

Tropes used in BoJack Horseman include:
  • Abusive Mom:
    • Beatrice Horseman turned BoJack into the cynic he is, as much as her husband Butterscotch did. She constantly blamed her son for ruining her figure and her life, when it was her choice to not get an abortion or divorce her husband after realizing they weren't working out. It's also because of Beatrice that BoJack learned to never cry in front of people.
    • Cutie Cutie Cupcake was no prize to Princess Carolyn, one of her many kids and the only one who would pick up her mother's slack. Often Cutie Cutie Cupcake would drink herself to unconsciousness, forcing Princess Carolyn to take over her maid duties. As the years passed, mother became physically and emotionally dependent on her daughter, cutting her down. Her two decent moments were giving Princess Carolyn a necklace following a miscarriage, and revealing she had gotten accepted into college.
  • Adam Westing: If a real celebrity appears to voice their cameo, expect this to happen. This montage shows that:
    • "Character actress Margo Martindale" is chafed by the fact that no one respects her acting abilities now that she's turned fifty. She agrees to help BoJack whenever he has a criminal scheme. While Margo gets some Hidden Depths in season six after spending time at a convent and questioning if she can make up for how she hurt people and if she deserves forgiveness, she ditches the habit and drives off to commit more crimes. Though as a favor she does help Todd with a Zany Scheme to reconcile with his mother, since BoJack's first scheme with Margo involved sabotaging Todd's rock opera.
    • Daniel Radcliffe happened to become a big fan on the show's first season, so he gets a role in a season two episode, "Let's Find Out." Naturally, he has a lot of fun playing a dickish Former Child Star. He's Bojack's competitor on a game show for charity, and trolls him by pretending not to know his name, calling him "Bojangles" and "Chadwick Boseman".
    • Jessica Biel is revealed to have a phobia about mummies in "Mr. Peanutbutter's Boos" and becomes a cultist after Mr. Peanutbutter's fracking campaign leads to his house going underground during a campaign party, and she sets Zach Braff on fire.
    • Laura Linney is Diane's seatmate on a plane from Vietnam, because she's going to a location on set to film a riff on Eat, Pray, Love, the story of a divorced woman that travels to another country to find herself. Diane, also going through a divorce and traveling to find herself, asks Laura how her movie goes. Laura cheerfully says that in the movie, she fights with and makes out with her clone.
  • Adult Fear:
    • A flashback reveals that BoJack was nearly molested by a choir teacher who drove him home. He wasn't, but it was scary, not helped by his mother's dismissive reaction about it, saying he must have not been attractive enough.
    • The show does not mince words about how stage parents ruin child actors' lives. Carol Himmelfarb-Richardson belittles her daughter Sarah Lynn for wanting to be an architect, when the poor kid is only three, and pushes her into the life of a teenage idol. Her husband may also be a child molester, given he home-schools Sarah Lynn, she hides in BoJack's dressing room from him because Mr. Richardson acts "weird" in her words, and as an adult she can identify bear fur by licking it. Not helping is that Sarah Lynn equates the affection BoJack shows her in "Prickly Muffin" with sexual ardor, and they hook up after she angrily reminds him that they only played father and daughter on television, and he's not a parental figure in her life. No one else from the show fared any better; the kid who played Goober on Horsin' Around is now a drug dealer, Joelle is a bitter British stage actress who is never cast as the lead, and Bradley Hitler-Smith has to remind BoJack that the horse broke up his parents' marriage by sleeping with his mother.
    • "The Old Sugarman Place" shows the complete and utter devastation that Honey Sugarman feels on losing her oldest child Crackerjack. She goes to the vacation home in the winter to search for his blanket, lamenting that he must have died because he didn't have it with him while serving in the army. Her husband Joseph hides his grief because it's expected of him, and encourages her to find other means to deal with her "womanly hysteria" by distracting herself with first class leisure. Beatrice realizes something is wrong with her mother when at a party for the only time ever she is allowed to have a freezy pop -- Beatrice was always told that ice-cream was for boys and would make her fat-- and Honey goes to a piano to start singing half of a duet. Yet she is too little to understand this trauma, and Honey makes her drive home, only to crash them both into a nearby gas station by hitting the gas pedal while Beatrice lost control of the wheel. While Joseph went too far in giving Honey a lobotomy after this incident after she begged him to "fix" her, he was legitimately freaking out that she and Beatrice nearly died, and then they would have lost both their children.
  • The Alcoholic:
    • BoJack, BoJack, BoJack is this. It's never made clear what a 1,200 lb horse's tolerance limit is, but he is always over it. Princess Carolyn rarely finds him sober when he wants to talk business. In "Escape From LA" he is so experienced with alcohol that he chides Penny's friends for bringing vodka and Red Bull to prom; he orders her to stop at a liquor store and pick up bourbon cut with water so they don't dehydrate. Season five has him attempt to cut back to one shot of vodka a day, but by the season five finale he's drinking one bottle a day. He manages a few months of sobriety after a season six stint in rehab, but relapses after getting Hollyhock's letter. To his credit though, he never denies he has this problem.
    • Princess Carolyn briefly becomes this in season four following her fifth miscarriage, breakup with Ralph, and finding out that her trusted assistant Judah didn't tell her about her former boss wanting to buy their agency and potentially saving it. Todd snaps her out of it by giving her one of her many Rousing Speeches to her, telling Princess Carolyn that she needs to "get [her] shit" together, using an analogy about the woods to explain things may be dark now but there is always a pathway to the light.
  • Artistic Licence: Both BoJack and later Diane are late delivering their memoirs on deadline. BoJack's inability to write even a coherent sentence motivates Pinky to hire him a ghostwriter. Most nonfiction books require a proposal submitted to an agent, including memoirs.
  • Bittersweet Ending: If there isn't a happy ending in the show, expect this instead:
    • "Old Acquaintance": Yes, it is kinda bad that Princess Carolyn cost BoJack two film deals, one that would have helped him mend his relationship with Kelsey, but Rutabaga and Vanessa Gecko get their happy ending by playing by the rules and they both make it to the birth of his children.
    • "What Time Is It Right Now?" ends with BoJack successfully tracking down Hollyhock's mother and giving the information to her adoptive fathers, saying he doesn't want credit and revealing they're half-siblings, not father and daughter. He asks that they give it to her so that she has answers. He also agrees to star in a new show that Princess Carolyn is producing, as thanks for all the help she has given him. Todd is also potentially kindling a relationship with another asexual woman. Hollyhock figures out who got the phone info, calls BoJack, and forgives him for Beatrice overdosing her since it happened in his house. She says that she already has eight fathers, but has never had a brother, causing BoJack to smile. On the other hand, Diane and Mr. Peanutbutter realize their marriage is over when he makes another grand gesture by recreating her childhood dream of having Belle's library in their new house, and Diane screams at him while realizing he's never going to change.
    • "Nice While it Lasted" as the Series Finale sets the tone for an uncertain, yet optimistic future for BoJack. He is alive, but has to serve about two years in prison for "breaking and entering" while knowing it's for the other stuff he is accused of, and is broke excluding the lump sum that Angela gave to him for the rights of Horsin' Around. Most of his friends have also moved on with their lives -- BoJack winces when Princess Carolyn reveals she invited him to her business wedding but not the actual friends and family wedding she hosted in private, while Diane calmly calls BoJack out for expecting her to save him from drowning while she was asleep in Chicago. Still, there is hope: BoJack is sober, Todd and Princess Carolyn share fond moments with him at the wedding, Mr. Peanutbutter is still his ride-or-die, and Diane thanks BoJack for helping her become the woman she is right now.
  • Both Sides Have a Point:
    • Comes up in "Sunk Cost and All That"
      • Diane walks out when realizing that BoJack and Princess Carolyn are not going to come clean with the whole truth of what happened with Sarah Lynn, including the important detail that he was responsible for her overdose. She says that at this point, BoJack telling the truth as it is would mean that his conscience is clear, and he can prove that he is a changed person rather rather than the horse he used to be. Princess Carolyn replies rather tactlessly that no one would want to see the real BoJack as he was when he killed Sarah Lynn, and being one hundred percent honest will help no one. "Xerox of a Xerox" shows both of their points coming to life: coming clean would have at least helped BoJack not get blindsided by Biscuits's barrage, but when he shows the real BoJack as a Never My Fault horse that uses his celebrity to get away with his bullshit, Princess Carolyn knows his career is sunk.
      • Paige prepares to write about how BoJack Horseman was responsible for Sarah Lynn's death. Max suggests that considering the patterns they've uncovered, it may be better to show that it wasn't just Sarah Lynn, but other victims as well like the head of the BoJack fanclub, Princess Carolyn (and yes, she is a victim of BoJack's emotional manipulation), and countless other women. It's a legitimate point, that BoJack has taken advantage of other people and ruined their lives. Paige worries that if they make it a general pattern, their readers will forget the tragedy of the situation, that Sarah Lynn died because someone she trusted didn't call 911 in time. They end up both being right; Princess Carolyn helps BoJack do an apology interview with Biscuits Braxby to save the situation the day that the news story about Sarah Lynn runs. Furious that he's circumvented the storm and evaded justice, Paige goes to the interviewer's office and shows her all the evidence that she and Max uncovered showing that BoJack has a habit of ruining people when he gets involved with their lives.
  • Bottle and Switch Episode: Is fond of these episodes, along with a few standard Bottle Episodes:
    • "Downer Ending" is set mostly in BoJack's house, while he is trying to prove he can write a better book than Diane. It's easy to mistake this one for a Bottle Episode given the first scene is short in Pinky Penguin's office. But then BoJack recruits Sarah Lynn, Todd, and Sarah Lynn's drug provider Dr. Hu, and a Mushroom Samba ensues. BoJack has a trippy dream about raising a daughter with Charlotte, as well as Diane being a melting blob monster as well as a Peanuts pastiche. It finally ends with BoJack waking up outside his house, running to apologize to Diane at a ghostwriters convention, and beg her to answer if he is a good person.
    • "It's You" takes place at BoJack's house when he celebrating his Oscar nomination that turns out to not be real but something Mr. Peanutbutter and Todd made up when they lost the real list of nominees. There are hundreds of characters, some who only exist for this episode.
    • "The Old Sugarman Place" is a Whole-Episode Flashback that at first promises to take place in the titular location, as BoJack spends the winter in his family's rundown vacation home. The episode then veers as BoJack accepts help from a neighbor named Eddie to rebuild the place, and steal back a weathervane. We then get a heartbreaking scene where Eddie sings "I Will Always Think of You" in the present as a distraction while BoJack grabs the weathervane, and Honey Sugarman, BoJack's grandmother, sings it in the past while thinking of her older son Crackerjack at a party, creating a haunting duet. Oh, and also when BoJack tricks Eddie into flying, Eddie tries killing them both in a Murder-Suicide.
    • "The View from Halfway Down" takes place in a mansion where BoJack visits his mother, taking a young Sarah Lynn with him. It turns out to be a recurring dream that he has, of attending a dinner party with dead people he knew, some as close as his parents, and some as distant as Zach Braff. While at first it seems the episode will be people talking about their lives, we find out it's a hallucination that BoJack is suffering after he drowned himself in his old swimming pool. Soon the visuals get trippy, especially when everyone performs one last time, and tar submerges the entire mansion.
  • Byronic Hero: BoJack Horseman, and Mr. Peanutbutter calls him out for it in "Let's Find Out". He does have everything that a person would want -- a lifetime of royalties that allow him to live comfortably, a group of friends who have his back, and at times, true love. The problem is that BoJack never allows himself to be happy, and he has to sabotage himself and others. If on the rare occasion that BoJack doesn't do himself in, someone else does, and he allows it to sink him.
  • Calling the Old Man Out: Zigzagged with BoJack and his mother in the first four seasons; he is less likely to take her emotional abuse passively the way that he did as a child, and while he entertains her with crossword puzzle answers, he picks up his phone less often when seeing her caller ID and reaches for alcoho. One flashback had him bluntly asking how her decision to have him with Butterscotch was his fault, and sarcastically thanked her for a painting she inherited from her father Joseph Sugarman since she peppered the whole conversation with emotional abuse and said it'd be nice to have a memory of this conversation. Season four had him prepare to go full tilt when she has to live in a nursing home and starts succumbing to dementia, and he would have well been justified by the finale. Instead, he lies to her that she's in the Sugarman vacation home.
  • Cassandra Truth: When BoJack accidentally gets his mother kicked out of her nursing home, since his attempt to stage a Horsin' Around episode led to her assaulting another resident while having a panic attack, he prepares to put her in another one. Hollyhock, who might be his daughter, says that her "grandmother" seems harmless enough. She asks that surely Beatrice has changed given she's nowhere near as vitriolic as BoJack described. BoJack warns her that Beatrice is an emotionally abusive monster, but Hollyhock persists. Against his better judgement, BoJack moves Beatrice into his house with Tina Bear as the main nurse. Hollyhock ultimately should have listened to BoJack: he finds out that Beatrice was spiking the communal coffeepot with amphetamine-based diet pills, and was somewhat aware of what she was doing in her senility given she thought that Hollyhock was fat. While BoJack didn't notice because he has twice that many drugs on a regular basis, Hollyhock suffers an overdose and collapses in the bathroom, and her eight adoptive fathers blame BoJack for not watching her. BoJack angrily drives Beatrice to another nursing home, cursing that he hated to be right.
  • Character Development: Season six is the only place where most of the cast has this trope stick. In some cases, however, minor characters reach it earlier:
    • "Bojack the Feminist" has Ana Spanakopita undergo this offscreen. She tries to convince Diane to abandon a PR smear campaign that Princess Carolyn convinced her to pursue, on behalf of her client Vance Waggoner. Diane retorts that as a woman, shouldn't Ana consider what it means to be complicit in the Hollywoo business cycle of double standards? Ana thinks about it, realizes that Diane is right, drops Vance after he causes another controversy, and shows Diane something important: the tape recording of BoJack confessing what he almost did to a "girl" in New Mexico.
    • Mr. Peanutbutter has a habit of marrying women in the hope of pursuing that perfect relationship, while being a less-than ideal boyfriend and husband who doesn't listen. It seems that he will continue the cycle with proposing to Pickles after cheating on her with Diane, his ex-wife. Then he decides to put off their wedding by confessing to her about what happened, and trying to find a suitable compromise. When she wants to cheat in turn to call it even, she develops real feelings for her designated partner celebrity Joey Pogo, and receives a job opportunity with him. Mr. Peanutbutter is devastated but encourages her to fly with Joey, letting her go for her own happiness. She breaks up with Mr. Peanutbutter next episode, via text. In the series finale, he is single and reveals to BoJack that he's been seeing a therapist to work on himself and not become emotionally clingy to romantic partners.
    • After spending six seasons as a depressed Soapbox Sadie and naysayer, Diane finally chooses a happier life when moving to Chicago with her boyfriend Guy after they both lose their jobs at GirlCroosh. A psychiatrist prescribes her antidepressants, and BoJack encourages her to take them. Diane tries them out, finally lets go of the need to kvetch about societal problems all the time, and trusts in the happiness. She also sets clear boundaries with BoJack and cuts ties with him when he can't respect them.
  • Cool Big Bro: Crackerjack Sugarman was this in life to his little sister Beatrice, which made his death in World War II all the more devastating for her and the family. Before he was deployed abroad, he got embarrassed and touched when seeing his mother wanted him to take his Security Blanket Blankie with him. He found a compromise by asking Beatrice to take good care of Blankie, saying that he would be able to fight better if Blankie was in good hands. Beatrice kept her promise, but it didn't save her older brother. BoJack mentions resentfully in "The View from Halfway Down" that he could never live up to Crackerjack's memory, and the family resemblance is there to his uncle.
  • Cool Motive, Still A Crime:
    • BoJack himself has a few moments. He hopes that by opening up to Diane about his traumatic childhood, after she encourages him to give a real story for his ghostwritten biography, that it means they have become closer. Instead, it makes Diane realize he is a big jerk, and she puts that in her book One Trick Pony. Later, Todd after suffering two seasons of abuse from BoJack hits his Rage Breaking Point in "It's You" after learning that BoJack slept with his crush and old girlfriend Emily. BoJack blames it on the drugs and Oscar stress while apologizing. Todd spells it out: BoJack can't keep blaming his actions on his addictions or bad childhood. In the end, it's him. He has to take responsibility for his actions. "Fuck man, what else is there to say?".
    • Goes both ways with Todd and his family. Todd at first resents his mother and stepfather for kicking him out; the reason they did is a videogame sucked him in to the point where he dropped out of high school and shut out everything in the real world. Kicking him out was a last resort as they both tried to reason with him to unplug. In season six, Todd admits that his mother may have had a point in forcing him to grow up with some Tough Love while talking with his stepfather, but also points out they didn't talk to him for ten years. His stepfather apologizes for that, after Todd saves his mother's life by tracking down the kidney he sold. They all reconcile by the series finale, with Todd admitting that they all made mistakes but are growing past them.
    • BoJack at his mother's funeral acknowledges that Beatrice Horseman had a hard life. She had him when she was too young to know better, and didn't have the resources that his generation did to talk about independence, mental health, divorce, or self-actualization. As he discusses while popping pills, that his mother suffered does not excuse the way that she treated him as a kid, or how she poisoned Hollyhock with diet pills to "help" her lose weight.
    • Part of the reason that Diane has intense self-loathing and righteousness about how the world should be is that her family treated her as The Unfavorite, with her brothers keeping a video of a cruel prank they pulled on her at prom. It means, however, that she can make selfish decisions with these quests. BoJack called her out for leaking chapters of One Trick Pony and never considering how it would make him feel when she's being harassed for trying to expose a celebrity named Hank Hippopopalous for abusing his secretaries and wants BoJack to support her. Mr. Peanutbutter, who is no saint, tells Diane that it may make her feel like she's doing the right thing by flying to Cordovia to cover the war there, but she could die and it's not worth risking her life for a moral crusade. Diane finds out that he's right when a child's death traumatizes her so much that she flies home early. Her GirlCroosh boss Stefani bluntly says that Diane's desire for perfection makes everyone miserable, including Diane. Guy, her new boyfriend, says that he knows that Diane hates lavish gifts after Mr. Peanutbutter refused to stop his Grand Romantic Gesture habit, but he is offering her a coat as a gift, and she needs it in Chicago rather than borrowing his all the time.
    • When Biscuits Braxby goes off-script during her second interview with BoJack, her conclusions ultimately boil down to this regarding BoJack. She just found out that BoJack waited seventeen minutes to call 911 after Sarah Lynn passed out in the planetarium from heroin overdose, and her reaction is pure Tranquil Fury. Yes, Sarah Lynn was a druggie and a ticking time bomb to anyone that bothered to look beyond her Stepford Smiler Jerkass exterior, but she was a kid when BoJack started inadvertently corrupting her. He was the one who accidentally gave her alcohol as a child and made his hairdresser Sharona take the fall for it when Sarah Lynn got sick. BoJack also gave her the terrifying speech to never stop performing and that no one would ever love her except her fans, when she was a preschooler. Sarah Lynn has less moral culpability for her own actions now that she's dead, and that the living are trying to change her image either out of guilt-- like Dr. Hu who gets clean of drugs on realizing it was dumb luck that he didn't kill Sarah Lynn as her supplier-- or profit -- like her parents who commercialize her death. BoJack doesn't help his case by blurting out that he "didn't sleep with Sarah-Lynn until she was thirty!" and she played his TV daughter on Horsin' Around. Biscuits points out with that revelation, it sounds like BoJack groomed Sarah Lynn into the lifestyle that led to her overdose; he gave her alcohol as a child, slept with her as an adult, convinced her to break her nine months of sobriety to go on a bender, and left her to die. Even worse, paramedics have a Don't Ask policy so he never would have gotten in trouble anyway! BoJack tries to justify that he never meant to do any of this; addicts are stupid owing to their addictions. Biscuits shuts that down by pointing out that BoJack consciously chose not to save Sarah Lynn, purely to cover his ass.
  • Dark Reprise: There are two in "The View From Halfway Down":
    • Sarah Lynn in her funeral clothes sings one of "Don't Stop Dancing," the song that BoJack heard during his nightmare in "The Showstopper" with an EDM dance bridge and new lyrics. She leaves it unfinished on two refrains of "Don't stop dancing" before holding her breath and jumping into the door onstage, a void of darkness where she doesn't emerge.
    • Crackerjack plays "I Will Always Think Of You" on the trumpet while his "younger/older" sister Beatrice recreates her debutante dance routine from the night she met Butterscotch Horseman. She uses a sash that lengthens the longer she dances, before using it to wrap herself in a cocoon of white ribbon. BoJack watches in silent horror, having learned he's drowning in his old swimming pool and this is all a hallucination, as Crackerjack ties one end of Beatrice's scarf around his waist and leaves the song unfinished when he jumps into the door onstage, causing black tar to ooze onto the sash and devour Beatrice as well. And to make matters worse, BoJack never heard Crackerjack play it on the piano in real life because his uncle died long before he was born.
  • Deconstruction: The show takes a potshot at many tropes that occur in fiction:
    • Aesop Amnesia: In sitcoms, you can forget the lesson you learned and everyone will forgive you. Not-so-much in real life: your mistakes that have hurt people will traumatize them, and even your best friends aren't that forgiving.
    • Character Development: Throughout seasons one through six, BoJack examines this trope for himself, wanting to grow as a person but also sabotaging himself owing to a lot of personal flaws and insecurities. He keeps bouncing backward and forward, suffering relapses of drugs and ego. Diane also suffers this problem until she moves to Chicago to be with Guy and , and she argues with Mr. Peanutbutter at her 35th birthday party about the fact that he is fine staying the same, and expects her to never change.
    • Downer Ending: BoJack romanticizes this trope in season one, with the penultimate episode even titled this. He views it as an inevitable end for stories with imperfect protagonists. While sometimes a downer ending in the show is necessary owing to the mistakes that BoJack and his friends make, there is a reason why it is called "downer". The mistakes that lead to these endings carry on with emotional ramifications: Diane and Mr. Peanutbutter's relationship develops serious cracks, Princess Carolyn nearly succumbs to the same alcoholism that plagued her mother, while Todd struggles to find his identity and purpose after losing multiple job opportunities and realizing he is ace. As for the minor characters, Penny Carson gets PTSD from BoJack nearly responding to her advances when she was seventeen, Gina Cazador also gets PTSD from BoJack choking her, Margo Martindale torpedoes her middle-aged actress life in favor of criminal actiivty and cheap thrills.. As for fictional examples, Horsin' Around ended on a sour note with the title Horse dying and the kids being sent to foster care, while Lenny Turtletaub vetoes filming Secretariat with this, replacing Secretariat's real-life suicide with a Love Interest named Suzy Side.
    • Driven to Suicide: BoJack spends seasons one through four romanticizing suicide. His hero Secretariat jumped off a bridge after being banned from running, after giving advice to BoJack as a kid to never stop avoiding his problems. BoJack thinks that he will end his life by drowning when he's too old to take care of himself, as he writes in his memoirs, and it will be peaceful. That's not how reality goes: the first time he tries to drown himself during an Oscar party, it traumatizes the partygoers and Mr. Peanutbutter saves him. The second time, he goes Oh Crap on realizing what he did while trapped in a hallucination of a dinner party that his mother is hosting, and tries to wake himself up when Secretariat/Butterscotch points out his body in the pool. He was so hopped up on drugs that he didn't realize what he was doing. Turns out he was rescued by the family who bought his house, traumatizing the children, and one boy goes viral for saying BoJack scared the "Bo-jeebers out of me!" He also called Diane while in this state, believing that she would save him; Diane was asleep at the time and in Chicago, way to far to save him. Diane calls him out for this in the series finale, pointing out that he put the burden of his survival on her after promising he would be okay without her in Los Angeles, and that's why she's ending their friendship.
    • Happily Married: There is no such thing as this trope. Relationships, platonic or otherwise, require constant work. Diane and Mr. Peanutbutter are genuinely in love in season one, but cracks start showing in season two after they get married, with Mr. Peanutbutter refusing to listen to Diane's hatred of the Grand Romantic Gesture as well as big parties, and Diane refusing to take Mr. Peanutbutter's concerns about her risking her life for a story. Season 4 with Mr. Peanutbutter running for governor causes further rifts as Diane in good conscience can't support him being a politician, and they divorce when he makes a "Belle" room for her and completely missed that Diane still hates grand gestures. While Diane does get married offscreen to Guy, she said it took a lot of work to get to that point.
    • Protagonist-Centered Morality: No one thinks they are the villain of someone else's story, and sometimes you are not the hero of your own. BoJack's actions are pretty heinous when an outside party hears about them, and Hollywoo rakes him over the coals for sleeping with Sarah Lynn given the age difference and power dynamic, as well as leaving her to die when she succumbed to an overdose during her bender. He's not the only character that suffers this, though: Princess Carolyn's Sitcom Arch Nemesis Vanessa Gecko is catty, sharky, and manipulative-- in fact, she's pretty similar to Princess Carolyn, the difference being that she's Happily Married and has kids. Here is the thing: both women engage in underhanded techniques to secure good deals for their clients and agencies. "Old Acquaintances" shows that Vanessa had some lines that she wouldn't cross when securing a film deal for a client that Princess Carolyn was seeking for BoJack, and she plays by the rules. We find out that Princess Carolyn stopped a devoted assistant Laura from being promoted, and Vanessa uses this to convince Laura to block Princess Carolyn's deal. The next episode, "Best Thing That Ever Happened," focuses entirely on how much Princess Carolyn screwed up this deal for BoJack.
  • Deliberate Values Dissonance:
    • "Escape to L.A." has Penny try to invoke this when hitting on BoJack. She points out that in most states she'd be a minor but New Mexico law considers her an adult. Everyone else, including BoJack himself at first, points out that's a messed-up way of thinking. Penny is still a child emotionally, and a teen to boot. When BoJack tries to justify it in season 5 during a fight with Diane, after she heard a recorded confession about the incident but didn't know the details, he says he did nothing legally wrong. And he might not have even done something morally wrong since nothing happened. Diane retorts that the law doesn't matter; it's that he actually considered doing the deed with a child young enough to be his daughter, and a family friend who trusted him, that was wrong..
    • By the standards of the 1950s, Joseph Sugarman, Beatrice's father and BoJack's paternal grandfather, was a loving father. He worked hard to provide for his family, tried to secure what might have been a Perfectly Arranged Marriage for his daughter, and arranged for fun family vacations. But by modern standards? Joseph was physically and emotionally abusive. He gets his wife lobotomized after the trauma of losing their older son in World War II nearly causes her to kill Beatrice via car crash, and shakes her when due to said lobotomy, she didn't realize Beatrice had scarlet fever. Joseph burned Beatrice's things, including her doll, without explaining that they may have germs and that if she got emotional, she might end up like her mother. His only decent moment when Beatrice became an adult was grudgingly accepting her elopement with Butterscotch Horseman when Beatrice begged him to give her husband a job that would give them an upper-middle class lifestyle again, as raising a baby on a blue collar novelist income was harder than she thought.
    • Comes up during a flashback to the 90s in "Time's Arrow"; Beatrice personally delivers a painting to BoJack that belonged to his grandfather, while complaining about his father like always. BoJack asks why don't they just get a divorce if they hate each other so much? In her time, the 1950s, women didn't divorce their husbands and getting knocked up defiled them forever in theory. Beatrice says sarcastically that sure everyone in Hollywood is getting a divorce over little things like forgetting to replace the mustard, being a little sad, or not having a reason to stay together now that your only son is independent and a successful actor. BoJack says tiredly that it's actually a legitimate reason to divorce, after your kids have grown up and you no longer have anything in common. "The Old Sugarman Place" also showed that drunk driving was not understood, as a bartender tried to get Honey Sugarman sloshed when she was having a breakdown at a party before asking her to drive her daughter home. Beatrice apparently hasn't gotten a memo in the 1990s as she asks for a drink before she drives back upstate, and BoJack sarcastically says that's obviously a good idea before pouring her a glass of wine.
  • Distant Duet: A haunting one in "The Old Sugarman Place"; Eddie the firefly plays "I Will Always Think Of You" as a distraction at a barn while BoJack steals a weathervane. In the past, at a party in the same area, Honey Sugarman starts to sing it as well because it was one she'd sing with her son Crackerjack, providing the harmonics to Eddie's main melody. The audience hears both parts, but at the least, those at the 1950s party only hear Beatrice singing to herself while dealing with her grief of losing Crackerjack.
  • Downer Ending: Comes up quite a bit, and BoJack even references the trope in the episode of the same name:
    • "Zoes and Zeldas": It seems to be heading towards Bittersweet Ending as Todd sabotages his own rock opera efforts after buying an addicting videogame for five cents, but BoJack decides to give him a closet and proper living space in the house. Then we find out, as Diane's ex Wayne asserts that people don't change, not even someone proactive like her, that BoJack deliberately got Todd addicted to the game fearing that his best friend would move out if he became successful. He bought the game at Best Buy, paid the dollar store cashier to offer it for a nickel, and asked Margo Martindale to point out the game so that Todd would notice it. BoJack returns the game to Best Buy, but leaves the receipt under the couch. That's when we realize BoJack is a toxic influence that doesn't want to change.
    • "The Telescope": Diane unwittingly causes this by encouraging BoJack to tell the terminally ill Herb anything that he may regret later. BoJack does, but can't accept that Herb will not forgive him for abandoning , saying that his apology should be accepted because he "feels bad". They then get into a scuffle when BoJack examines a telescope that symbolized their friendship, and Herb kicks BoJack out of his house. Diane tries to lighten the situation on the drive home, but BoJack has to stop the car while having a panic attack. Her further attempts to comfort him lead to BoJack kissing her, the way Herb kissed him all those years ago. Unlike before, when Herb and BoJack were single at the time and Herb was able to play it off as excitement on learning that Horsin Around had been greenlit, Diane becomes very uncomfortable since she's engaged to Mr. Peanutbutter and BoJack has no legitimate excuse for what he did.
    • "Downer Ending": BoJack fails to write his memoirs in a week, even while hopped on drugs, and a talk with a hallucination of Diane makes him realize that he is exactly the kind of horse that she described in One Trick Pony and doesn't want to be that guy anymore. When he comes out of his trip, Princess Carolyn informs him over the pgone that he delivered a bunch of nonsense. BoJack hurries to a ghostwriters convention where he apologizes to Diane as she speaks on a panel, verbally giving his permission for her to publish One Trick Pony as is, and to beg her to tell him if he's a good person. She can't answer.
    • "Hank After Dark": Diane completely fails to bring down Hank or deliver proof that he's abused his secretaries, as the news cycle moves onto Kanye West shenanigans. When she arrives home after talking with BoJack and apologizing for writing One Trick Pony without considering how he would feel, Mr. Peanutbutter gives her a quiet What the Hell, Hero? for not respecting his wishes to drop this crusade. He shows her the amount of death threats that have arrived in the mail, days' worth of them, and says that maybe she should fly to Cordovia, to write the book about Sebastian St. Clair and get away from the scandal. She does, feeling the rift in their relationship grow, and frowns as a random guy orders her to smile at the airport. Meanwhile, Wanda starts feeling resentful that BoJack chose to support Diane and not her, since her company MBN employs Hank.
    • "Yes, And": When Wanda tries to surprise BoJack with a vacation after he burns bridges with the new Secretariat director Abe de Catfish and is punished with long filming days that burn him out, BoJack lashes out at her, accusing her of wanting him to be happy the way she is. They have a serious fight, where Wanda realizes that BoJack has never respected her or her job, and they realize their relationship is over. She moves out to live with her sister, and BoJack, rather than apologize to Wanda or Todd, who goes on an improv group cruise, decides to listen to a sloshed Diane to figure out the last time he was happy. He completely blows off Todd's improv performance before he sails and filming the last few bits of Secretariat to drive to New Mexico and seek out Herb's ex Charlotte.
    • "Escape From L.A.": BoJack disrupts Charlotte's quiet life in New Mexico, left Maddy and Pete at the E.R. after Maddy develops alcohol poisoning from the bourbon he bought Penny's prom friends, and nearly sleeps with her daughter. Enraged, Charlotte kicks him out of her house and threatens to kill him if he ever contacts her family again. When BoJack returns to Los Angeles, he finds a zonked-out and buzzed Diane still chilling on the balcony, like he never left.
    • "Best Thing That Ever Happened": BoJack starts the episode preparing to fire Princess Carolyn on his publicist Ana's advice for screwing up two big movie deals for him, and costing him a chance to make up with Kelsey Jannings. Princess comes prepared to save her job because if BoJack goes, her agency sinks. The problem is that due to poor communication issues and the fact that BoJack owns the restaurant where they meet, Elefante, BoJack accidentally fires the head chef instead and most of the staff follow him. Against her better judgment, Princess Carolyn bails out BoJack one last time by making mushroom risotto for a restaurant critic that won't leave until she gets a meal, and begs for six more months as his client to fix things. BoJack still fires her. While this decision ends up being better for Princess Carolyn in the long run because she spends some couple time with Ralph and restructures her career, it is still harsh.
    • "It's You": BoJack trashes his house during the Oscar party, fights with Diane, and nearly drives his sports car into his swimming pool, requiring Mr. Peanutbutter to rescue him and give him CPR. He ends up not winning the Oscars owing to a technicality that a CGI double of him was used in Secretariat, and Ana breaks up with him. Todd moves out after realizing that BoJack had done something to Emily, yelling at BoJack when learning that the horse slept with his high school girlfriend while Todd was rekinding his relationship with her. He rejects BoJack's apology and spells out that BoJack is the problem, not his tragic backstory or the various addictions. BoJack is left in the ruins of his house.
    • "That's Too Much, Man!": BoJack invites Sarah Lynn on a bender, breaking her nine months of sobriety, her longest yet. They end up having long blackouts and cause chaos throughout the country, including re-breaking Diane's arm, traumatizing Penny while she's attending Oberlin, and causing reckless property damage. The episode ends with BoJack taking Sarah Lynn to the planetarium after hours, following her breakdown after seeing her stepfather accept an Oscar on her behalf. She passes out in his arms, and he realizes belatedly that she succumbed to an overdose.
    • "Ruthie": After one bad day, Princess Carolyn loses another important client, has to fire Judah for violating her trust, suffers her fifth miscarriage, and breaks up with Ralph over the subsequent fight regarding that he didn't know it was her fifth. On top of that, a jeweler tells her that her broken necklace is not a family heirloom but a thirty-year old piece of costume jewelry from JC Penney. We also learn that Ruthie, the cute descendant in the future narrating about this day, isn't real: Princess Carolyn made her up as a coping mechanism to deal with stress, to convince herself that one day she will have kids, and a family. The episode ends with Princess Carolyn using a paperclip to tie the necklace back around her neck shedding this fantasy once and for all.
    • "Lovin that cali lifestyle" features Hollyhock overdosing on amphetamines, and her adoptive parents blaming BoJack for getting her addicted. BoJack finds out that Beatrice was dosing Hollyhock with diet pills in the communal coffee pot, as a "family secret". He yells at her for destroying the one good thing in his life that he hadn't managed to destroy and drives her to the worst nursing home that he can find, planning to cut her out of his life completely. Todd fails to get his clown dentist business off the ground, so he sets the clowns loose in the woods. Diane is mad at Mr. Peanutbutter because while they help Governor Woodchuck get reelected, Mr. Peanutbutter's antics caused a lot of moral hazard and a wedge in their relationship. Princess Carolyn is unable to get BoJack to sign onto a new project called Philbert, so she forges his signature on the contract in a moment of desperation.
    • "The Showstopper": BoJack's latest addiction causes him to confuse reality with the script for Philbert, just as Gina confronts him for his drug addiction and her character Sassy in the show finds out Philbert was the Strangler all along. Also that mysterious note he got saying it knew what he did? It was promotion for the latest season of Philbert. He chokes Gina for real during a stunt, and nearly kills her when Flip orders the camera to keep running. Mr. Peanutbutter has to rescue Gina, who is gasping with bruises around her neck. BoJack steps back into his hallucination, walking up a flight of stairs to face the Philbert balloon that's been haunting him all episode.
    • "Sunk Cost and All That" ends happily for no one, even Hero Antagonist duo Paige Sinclair and Max Banks. BoJack is forced to reveal to his friends that he was responsible for Sarah Lynn's death. Todd walks away on seeing BoJack regress to his arrogant season one self saying that he's much better and shouldn't be held accountable, and Diane steps back when Princess Carolyn starts brainstorming how to spin the story and save BoJack's reputation, when she realizes that neither of them will come clean about what really happened. BoJack feels guilty and asks Princess Carolyn if maybe her happy ending is without him. Meanwhile, Mr. Peanutbutter unwittingly gives the smoking gun to Paige and Max -- that BoJack gave Sarah Lynn the heroin and was with her when she died-- in an attempt to defend BoJack. Pickles leaves with Joey Pogo for a business opportunity as Mr. Peanutbutter puts their engagement on hold. Mr. Peanutbutter knows this is the end of his latest relationship, but encourages her to go because he knows it's the right thing to do. Paige prepares to write the story, as Max gives her an Anguished Declaration of Love. while convincing her to not just focus on Sarah Lynn; Paige, however, is engaged to Baxter, goes for Plausible Deniability that "Everyone loves Paige Sinclair" and walks away from Max to keep their relationship professional.
    • "The View from Halfway Down": Technically none of this episode is real, but it's still depressing. BoJack realizes that this dinner party is the last conscious part of his brain, as he's drowned himself in his swimming pool. All of the guests vanish through the door of darkness, with Herb saying, "There is no other side" as he dissolves into black tar. BoJack insists that he got out of the pool to call Diane, and lunges for the phone in the hallucinatory kitchen. Diane picks up... and reminds him that she's in Chicago, nowhere near enough to save him, and she didn't even answer the phone in real life. BoJack remembers that he got back into the pool, and realizes that he can't escape this death. So he has one last conversation with this illusory Diane, before sinking in tar. The only hope is that the flatline heard through the credits starts beeping towards the end.
  • Dying Dream: It's revealed that BoJack is suffering one in "The View from Halfway Down." He drowned himself in his swimming pool after the meeting with Angela, and the tar represents the water getting into his lungs and brain.
  • Harsh Life Revelation Aesop: This show is full of harsh life revelations:
    • "Prickly Muffin" as Diane tells BoJack, you can only do your best to help someone who doesn't want to be helped. When BoJack takes in Sarah Lynn fresh off a breakup with Andrew Garfield and constantly high on drugs, the right thing to do would be to take Sarah Lynn directly to a hospital due to her stabbing herself with a bayonet, and rehab. Sarah Lynn refuses to go to either place, however, and guilts BoJack into letting her crash at his place. Coddling her doesn't work; nor does trying to lay down boundaries because Sarah Lynn reminds BoJack he's not her actual parent, he only played it on TV, which leads to them having sex. Finally, Sarah Lynn leaves when BoJack prepares to drive her to rehab, saying cheerfully that she's at the point where nothing can make her grow up and one day she'll die tragically young.
    • "Live Fast, Diane Nguyen" has two that BoJack imparts on Diane: you don't owe your shitty family anything, and closure is not something you receive in real life. Her family manipulates her into coming home to arrange her father's funeral, spending the whole time belittling her and bringing up childhood trauma. To top it all off, they steal her father's body, turn him into chum, and skip the funeral. Even BoJack realizes that Diane is on the verge of snapping, but his attempts to help cause her to snap, steal the chum bucket, and run off cursing out her family. When he finds her stargazing, BoJack tells her You Did the Right Thing and tells her it's dumb to try and seek approval from people who will never appreciate her.
    • "Hank After Dark": Pick your battles, especially when losing means you can't do any good. Diane gets involved in a campaign against Hank Hippopopalous, aka Uncle Hanky, when she offhandedly mentions allegations during her tour with BoJack. She has no evidence, however, and soon the news and public label her as a "hysterical woman" that has a grudge against an American celebrity. Rather than let it go, as BoJack and Mr. Peanutbutter suggest, Diane doubles down and starts arguing with anyone on the street. Her attempts to get proof fail, as Hank lures her into a parking lot at night and asks her who she think she is that she can take him down. Diane is eventually forced to leave the country for a few months, mired in her failure.
    • "Yes And" features Wanda saying, "When you look through rose-tinted glasses, all the red flags just look like flags." She and BoJack break up after BoJack lashes out at her, and she realizes that he was never going to change and remain a bitter horse.
    • "Good Damage" has Diane realize that her childhood trauma meant nothing. She attempts to write a book of essays to process decades of emotional abuse and neglect from her parents, hoping that it will make other girls feel less alone. After a bad medication withdrawal and talking with Guy, who sees the pages of the new Ivy Tran novel that she started, Diane realizes that her damage was just "damage" and she got nothing out of it. Princess Carolyn comforts her, knowing what it's like to grow up with abusive parents, saying that Ivy Tran can make little girls feel less alone as a perky middle-school detective.
  • Hates Everyone Equally: Downplayed with BoJack; he hates himself slightly more than he hates everyone else.
  • Hero Antagonist: Sometimes this happens with either BoJack or Princess Carolyn. They aren't bad guys per se but the people opposing them come off relatively better:
    • Vanessa Gecko can be mean, catty, and manipulative. Thing is so is Princess Carolyn. "Old Acquaintance" shows Vanessa's side of the story when she and Princess Carolyn fight for their clients to take part in a blockbuster movie. Vanessa Gecko plays by the rules, so that her partner can go see the birth of his latest child. Later, in "The New Client" after recruiting Princess Carolyn to host a "Women Who Do it All" banquet, she is concerned when Princess Carolyn can't engage in their usual banter, giving sincere advice on how to be a mother even if you're not sure if you love your baby.
    • Max and Paige Sinclair can be a bit hammy and nosy, much to the discomfort of their interview subjects. Their concern about BoJack having a pattern of abusing people though, mainly women, is legitimate. Max wants Paige to pursue this angle, but Paige worries that talking about every woman that BoJack has hurt would diminish the tragedy of what happened with Sarah Lynn. She changes her mind when BoJack and Princess Carolyn stage an interview with Biscuits Braxby to get ahead of the news story. Paige storms into the chinchilla's office, and demands an audience with her. She provides the proof that BoJack is not someone who deserves a softball apology tour.
    • Biscuits herself becomes this during the second interview. She starts grilling BoJack about the details regarding Sarah Lynn's death and you can't argue with her. What kind of person would leave the person they loved and let her succumb to an overdose, purely to avoid getting in trouble?
  • Interspecies Romance: Seems to be both common and acceptable in this reality. BoJack often dates Princess Carolyn (a Persian cat) and dates human women frequently. Oddly, he has yet to be seen dating his own species.
  • Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane:
    • "The Old Sugarman Place" has a scene that hints about the past merging with the present. While stealing a weathervane to repair his family's vacation home, BoJack climbs on the roof while his partner Eddie plays the piano as a distraction. He starts to sing "I will Always Think Of You," the same song that Honey Sugarman would sing with her son Crackerjack before he died in World War II. Back in the late 1940s, after World War II, Honey Sugarman went with her daughter Beatrice to a party in the same spot. She seems to respond to Eddie and joins in on the duet; the other partygoers look with shock and pity, unsure what to do with a mother feeling intense grief. BoJack pauses while grabbing the weathervane, as if he can see the memory of his grandmother and mother as well.
    • While "The View From Halfway Down" plainly states that BoJack is experiencing a Dying Dream meaning we can't trust the veracity of what we see and everything happening is in his head, the characters at the dinner party state information that BoJack could not have known. Like Herb watching sports to deal with suicide ideation and traveling to Machu Picchu after he was blacklisted from Hollywood, Sarah Lynn's mother counting her calories on every tour. More ambiguous is stuff BoJack might have heard or conjectured, like Crackerjack having been a failure of a soldier with his only kills being friendly fire, and Secretariat both saying his suicide was the best decision he made and regretting it in poem form.
  • Monumental Theft: In season one, BoJack somehow manages to steal the "D" in the Hollywood sign when he's drunk; from that point on, calling the town "Hollywoo" is a Running Gag. Mr. Peanutbutter takes credit for the theft so as to propose to Diane. Later he tries to replace the D in the series finale...only for the terrible printing company he uses to deliver a giant B instead, turning Hollywoo into Hollywoob.
  • Mood Whiplash:
  • Not Me This Time: Deconstructed with Dr. Hu when he talks about Sarah Lynn's overdose to BoJack in the season five episode "Ancient History". He says that he knows he wasn't responsible for Sarah Lynn's death, because she was actually with BoJack at the time high on a street heroin called Horse, but the news gave him a wake-up call because he could have killed her. Her death motivated him to get clean and become a legitimate pediatrician so he can protect kids in Hollywoo. When BoJack tries to ask him for help in getting prescription opioids because he was reliable about that before, Dr. Hu (rightly, it turns out) suspects that BoJack is still an addict and encourages him to go to rehab.
  • The Nothing After Death: "The View From Halfway Down" reveals that subconsciously, BoJack doesn't believe in an afterlife. When he tells a hallucination of Herb, "See you on the other side" as they're viewing a door where all the dead characters have gone and the tar is rising, Herb says solemnly that there is no other side as he lets the tar take him.
  • Paper-Thin Disguise: A recurring character on the show, Vincent Adultman, is in fact three kids in a Totem Pole Trench pretending to be an adult, even though their attempts to act like one are just as bad. BoJack seems to be the only one who sees through this lame disguise.
  • Pet the Dog:
    • Joseph Sugarman was a terrible father to Beatrice and a controlling husband to her mother Honey, but he had his moments of occasional kindness:
      • When berating Honey for making a scene at a party and showing No Sympathy for their oldest son Crackerjack dying in combat, he pointed out that she nearly got Beatrice, their only daughter, killed in a car crash by making the underage Beatrice drive and then hitting the pedal, so they ran headlong into a nearby gas station. Beatrice begs him not to yell at her mother, but his Armor-Piercing Question hits the mark: "You aiming to get her killed as well?"
      • Joseph assumed that Beatrice wanted to stay home from school while being bullied and she was Playing Sick. Then she fainted as soon as she tried to get up from bed. Joseph went Oh Crap, checked her forehead and realized she was sick, from scarlet fever. He picks her up and carries her to get medical attention, before yelling at a lobotomized Honey for not noticing. Later, he reassured her that she wasn't going to die from scarlet fever, albeit with a remark that with her throat swollen she's less likely to gain weight.
      • Offscreen, Beatrice convinced him to give Butterscotch an office job that would ensure she and BoJack would live in comfort after she realized that he was never going to write a good novel. Joseph resented that Beatrice eloped with Butterscotch rather than marry Corbin Creamerman as planned, but it was decent of him.
    • The one time that Beatrice spoke as herself and didn't cut down her son BoJack was ironically when he was preparing to leave her in a terrible nursing home for the rest of her days after she poisoned Hollyhock. This convinced BoJack to, rather than curse out his mother, lie to her that she was in their family vacation home, so that her last few months would be peaceful.
    • "The Amelia Earhart Story" shows two moments from Princess Carolyn's mother, Cutie Cutie Cupcake. She was emotionally abusive in a different way from Beatrice, in that she became dependent on her daughter as an alcoholic with more kids than she could raise. Princess Carolyn had to cover her mother's shifts as a housekeeper when the latter was too wasted to do her job, while applying for college on the side. Yet when the son of their employers and heir to an answering machine empire knocked her up, Cutie Cutie Cupcake cheered up Princess Carolyn with a necklace that she claimed was a family heirloom. PRincess Carolyn found out a few decades later that it was costume jewelry. When Princess Carolyn miscarried, nullifying the Shotgun Wedding that both families wanted her to undergo, Cutie Cutie Cupcake revealed she had gotten into college and drove her to the airport. She balked at the last minute, begging Princess Carolyn to stay, but Princess Carolyn got on the plane.
  • Reality Ensues
    • BoJack often assumes that life will work out like a sitcom. It does not, and reality smacks him in the face:
      • During "Prickly Muffin," when he takes in Sarah Lynn, who played his fictional daughter Sabrina on Horsin' Around, he finds out that she's become a raging drug addict who stabs herself with a rusty bayonet after Andrew Garfield breaks up with her. Sarah Lynn also refuses to go to rehab. Remembering that he didn't take her to an amusement park when she asked if she could while they were filming, BoJack as an apology takes Sarah Lynn to the local amusement park, flies kites with her, and gifts her with the TV award that he said he would always want to give to his daughter. He then points at the sunset and shouts to roll the credits on this ending. Only problem: Sarah Lynn is now thirty, no longer three. She sells his TV award the next day for drug money; when BoJack confronts her about this, she has to point out that while she appreciated the gesture, she's no longer a child, he's not her father, and one day of fun can't solve her problems.
      • Horsin Around creator Herb got fired and blacklisted after being outed as a gay man, and BoJack was convinced by the show's executive producer Angela to not speak up in Herb's defense. When Sarah Lynn reveals that Herb has terminal cancer twenty years later, BoJack drums up the courage to call Herb, who gruffly invites him to his home for a day trip. Even though there's tension, they manage to have a civil visit, and Diane encourages BoJack to say anything he would regret not telling Herb. BoJack goes back inside and apologizes to Herb for not standing up for him, saying he feels bad. Herb shocks BoJack by telling him, "I don't forgive you." He says he had a good life, and doesn't regret being outed; what hurt more than BoJack standing by was that BoJack didn't even talk to him for twenty years. He needed a friend who wasn't there, and BoJack's apology is just to assuage guilt on the horse's part.
      • "The Shot" shows what happens when you try to defy Executive Meddling. BoJack has been cast in his dream role as Secretariat, disgraced runner who died by suicide after being blacklisted from racing. Producer Lenny Turtletaub opts to remove a scene BoJack finds important, of Secretariat making a Deal with the Devil with President Richard Nixon, to avoid going to Vietnam. Director Kelsey isn't happy about this, but she says it's not hers or BoJack's decision to show Secreteriat's Warts and All. BoJack convinces her if they film the scene and do it for the art, Turtletaub will be impressed by their dedication, and they break into the Nixon museum to get the titular shot. Kelsey is proven right, as Turtletaub fires her for insubordination when she shows him the footage. He says calmly he didn't like her doing what he asked her not to do, and as punishment for BoJack's role in the scheme, he hires a director that clashes with the horse and sabotages his other career choices. While later Kelsey averts this trope in Season Six by pitching a superhero movie on her terms, about the Double Standards that women face, for a long time her reputation is tarnished because she listened to BoJack.
      • BoJack nursed a crush on Herb's ex Charlotte, who decided to leave for Maine to find a simple life when Horsin' Around got the greenlight. She expressed to BoJack that he was cowardly for not saying what he wanted. Later, at Herb's funeral, she reveals she moved to New Mexico and invites BoJack to visit, giving him a business card. When BoJack breaks up with Wanda in "Yes And," he gets inspired to drive to New Mexico and profess his feelings for Charlotte. Then "Escape to L.A." starts; he shows up, and learns she has married, with two kids and a loving husband. As Charlotte lampshades at the end of "Escape to L.A.," after BoJack confesses he still has feelings for her, he actually thought she wouldn't change and find her own happiness, rather than pursue someone who was her ex's best friend? And no, she's not going to dump that all just because she also feels that spark with BoJack still.
      • There is also what happens with Charlotte's daughter Penny, who is a dead ringer for a younger Charlotte. She's thrilled that BoJack becomes her confidante and inadvertent driving teacher, even offering to take her to prom when her crush rejects her. BoJack humors Penny, up to the point where she kisses him. He breaks away, tells her she's seventeen so this is wrong, and he's too old for her so she doesn't know what she wants if she's hitting on him. When Charlotte turns down BoJack's proposition however, Penny approaches BoJack again. Cut to the first big Wham! Shot of season two when Charlotte hears Penny's voice on the yacht that BoJack purchased, climbs up, and finds Penny about to undress BoJack. Several years later, Penny has realized how foolish her crush was, but also that BoJack as the adult should have known better than to eventually accept her advances. She develops bad PTSD and panic attacks on seeing him again because he tracked her down at Oberlin College to apologize, and still has mixed feelings about her prom night in season six when Max and Paige track her down to figure out the timeline of Sarah Lynn's last few days.
      • BoJack has sabotaged Todd's rock opera, dismissed his improv theater group, and been unsupportive as a friend. Todd mainly stays with him because he has nowhere else to go, and believes BoJack needs a friend. BoJack then seems to redeem himself when rescuing Todd from the improv group after the latter learns he is in a cult. They mend their friendship in the season two finale. And then in season three, BoJack sleeps with Todd's crush/high school girlfriend Emily in a fit of Oscar nominee nerves, leading to Emily distancing herself from Todd out of guilt while they're working on a new business. Todd hits his Rage Breaking Point when he finds out, yelling at BoJack that he can't keep doing terrible things and thinking that an apology fixes that. Instinct had told him something had happened between BoJack and Emily after seeing how awkward they were around him, but as Todd put it, he thought BoJack's self-pitying monologues had skeeved her, not that BoJack treated Todd's emotional needs as meaningless. He moves out that same day, and for the rest of the series doesn't exactly mend his friendship with BoJack. While he later admits that he overreacted as he and Emily weren't dating at the time, Todd also says bluntly that BoJack violated his trust and doesn't know how to be a good person. BoJack himself monologues during "Free Churro" that saving Todd's life once and then betraying him later doesn't mean BoJack's grown as a person. Friendship requires putting in the work consistently.
      • Season five has BoJack start a relationship with his costar Gina on Philbert. When at first he teases her on learning she has a dream to star in a musical, he convinces her to do an impromptu singing audition for show creator Flip and producer Princess Carolyn. BoJack gives her a Rousing Speech that she needs to do this for her dream. Gina opens her mouth, takes. a deep breath... and rather than a showstopper, an off-key, okay rendition of one of her favorite musical songs comes out instead. She didn't practice for the audition after all. Flip and Princess Carolyn stare in shock, and Gina runs off apologizing. Princess Carolyn then admonishes BoJack for giving his new flame false hope.
      • The biggest one has to be in "Xerox of a Xerox". When a new story comes out with allegations that BoJack caused Sarah Lynn's death, BoJack and Princess Carolyn figure out that if they come ahead of the game and he apologizes on television, they can circumvent the scandal. It helps that BoJack is genuinely sorry, if a bit too concerned about how well his performed apology is rather than about the fact that he indirectly killed Sarah Lynn, and he seems to be Easily Forgiven by Hollywoo when the interview airs. Then he does a second interview out of a foolish sense of egotism, and Biscuits Braxby drops a bombshell: she found out that he left Sarah Lynn unconscious for seventeen minutes to save his ass and create an alibi for a cover story. The human body can go without oxygen for seven minutes, and Sarah Lynn had mentioned cheerfully in her debut that she overdoses all the time, but her party people call paramedics immediately. That BoJack didn't dial 911 as his first reaction violated basic decent, especially since paramedics have a Don't Ask policy. This time there is no Easily Forgiven, and the next episode shows everyone in Hollywoo hating BoJack.
    • Diane is a Wide-Eyed Idealist, which gets her in trouble:
      • Rather than ghostwrite BoJack's memoirs, she writes a biography called One Trick Pony and expects BoJack will love it because of how good it is. BoJack instead is hurt and embarrassed; she put in many embarrassing anecdotes and included the "warts" without the "and all" that she promised. When he demands her to fix it, she leaks two chapters on BuzzFeed instead; because she violated the terms of her ghostwriting contract by doing that, he fires her. Pinky in the next episode admits that Diane should be in legal trouble for that set of shenanigans. Diane takes a while to understand that in addition to breaking her contract, she violated a friend's trust.
      • Todd ropes her into a Zany Scheme to rescue a sapient chicken he names "Becca" from Chicken4Dayz. Diane eventually realizes this is cool and righteous, allowing her to stick it to corporate cruelty. Right? Wrong; the cops arrest her, Todd, and their "crony" Kelsey's daughter Irving for trespassing and robbery once catching them with Becca in tow.
      • "Hank after Dark" has this Played for Drama. Diane gets involved in a crusade to bring down a talk show host named Hank, after there are allegations that he was abusing his secretaries. There's no proof, however, and none of his victims are willing to speak up because Hank can ruin them further. A news editor interested in the story says that it's one thing if they had proof, but without any, the allegations just become hearsay; most publications refuse to run the accusations for that reason, and because Hank's employer companies have connections to the news. BoJack realizes This Is Gonna Suck, which shows how serious it is that the most Wrong Genre Savvy character can see the writing on the wall; he tells Diane This Is Reality, not a biopic, and she should let it go before this campaign ruins her. Her husband Mr. Peanutbutter says the same thing because Hank praised the new show he's on, and she's been getting death threats in the mail. Diane persists, convinced that if one person stands up to Hank, she can bring up to justice. Nope; Hank lures her to a parking lot using one of his secretaries as bait, and gives her The Reason You Suck Speech, asserting he is too valuable to be discredited. Diane has to fly to another country to let the heat die down. It's for this reason that Paige and Max are much smarter in season six when getting proof to accuse BoJack about causing Sarah Lynn's death, spending months if not years discreetly gathering testimony from sources they keep confidential before breaking the story.
      • "The Dog Days Are Over": Diane writes for GirlCroosh about traveling to Vietnam, about finding herself after divorcing Mr. Peanutbutter, like Julia Roberts in Eat, Pray, Love and other divorced women seeking a new life. She thinks that doing this will make her feel whole again after seeing that Mr. Peanutbutter found a rebound at his housewarming party. Unfortunately, real life is not a movie; Diane wanted the divorce, but she's heartbroken over the realization that her marriage is over, which is what led to her leaving the housewarming party in tears. In Vietnam, her attempts to go native fall south on realizing she doesn't speak fluent Vietnamese, and she's too Americanized to feel comfortable in the clothes that she wears. Not helping is that she'll have to go back to her shoddy apartment eventually, and she drunkenly propositioned BoJack. Rather than getting any sense of completion, Diane wrote that she realized she was alone, and could survive it. It's okay to settle for not having that moment of perfect happiness. Indeed, Diane has to switch therapists and start taking antidepressants in season 6 to achieve that sense of completion.
      • "Good Damage" has Diane attempt to go off her antidepressants to write her memoirs. Rather than get inspired by her pain, she starts losing track of time and throwing up while crying. Her boyfriend Guy identifies her as going through withdrawal. He puts her to bed, tells her to take her meds, and promises they'll talk when she's sober. There's a reason you don't go off your meds cold-turkey.
    • Sarah Lynn's arc tragically ends this way. She's been a raging drug addict and alcoholic for years to cope with the pressures of being a Former Child Star, able to consume a large amount of hallucinogens and stimulants; most are supplied by her pediatrician Dr. Hu, whom BoJack is surprised to learn actually has that name. Season three has to go into rehab to regain the buzz, since they're starting to ebb with the amount that she takes. She manages nine months but tells BoJack to call her when he's ready to party. When he does, the amount of heroin and alcohol they drink on that bender is enough to kill her, as she lost the acquired immunity. She doesn't wake up due to BoJack not calling the paramedics in time. Season five has Dr. Hu reveal that offscreen he went My God, What Have I Done? because even if it wasn't his fault that Sarah Lynn died, he could have been responsible. So he got clean and decided to become a legitimate pediatrician.
    • Season five has Todd, as part of a Zany Scheme courtesy of BoJack trying to influence Philbert, apply to be a janitor at whattimeisitrightnow.com. Owing to his impressive resume, he's given the title "head of marketing" instead. While at first it's Played for Laughs, the season looks into the ramifications of Todd becoming a boss to BoJack, Princess Carolyn, and Diane who joins Philbert as producer and writer at BoJack's request. He's forced to become a Reasonable Authority Figure following a Jerkass Realization when accusations about Princess Carolyn taking his string cheese cause a feud between them since she needs an office, especially when she points out he's living rent-free in her apartment. When Flip and Princess Carolyn try to downplay BoJack choking Gina for real during a stunt in Philbert and some crew-members got footage, Todd goes OOC Is Serious Business and yells at them. He says that they can't just sweep this scandal under the rug because BoJack is their friend, and prepares to cancel production of season two after hearing that BoJack nearly killed Gina. Princess Carolyn has to convince him to find out if that's even what Gina wants.
    • "The Stopped Show"
      • There is a tiny one easy to overlook. It seems that Beauty Is Never Tarnished when despite BoJack choking Gina while high on drugs during a stunt, she looks fine. BoJack even mentions she looks nice. Gina tells him in a dark, cold undertone that she's wearing a lot of makeup to hide the bruises around her neck.
      • Princess Carolyn also apologizes to BoJack about this situation, blaming herself for getting him hooked on painkillers while she was visiting her hometown. She says that she was unfocused, but once she has adopted a baby, her life will turn around. "The New Client" shows that this didn't happen; even before the latest nanny quits because Untitled Princess Carolyn Project is a handful and Princess Carolyn's hours are irregular, a baby has made Princess Carolyn's life more complicated. Untitled Princess Carolyn Project may have secured Princess Carolyn and Todd a show slot, but she's still a baby that needs feeding, changing and comforting while crying nonstop. Her adoptive mother's shocked when realizing that she loved the idea of having a baby more than the reality, as she voices to Vanessa Gecko when asking for advice on how to be a good mom. Vanessa actually reassures her by saying that not every mom loves their kid 24/7, and sometimes you have to treat your baby like a client, as the most important job in the world.
    • "A Quick One While He's Away" shows this for multiple characters that BoJack hurt either directly or indirectly are still traumatized or negatively affected by his actions:
      • Kelsey is gun-shy about pitching a project on her terms after BoJack not only got her fired from Secretariat by convincing her to do the Zany Scheme mentioned above, but also killed her passion project Jellie Bellie. She's been reduced to filming and directing commercials to pay for Irving's college tuition. It takes the whole episode for her to realize that she doesn't want to do a sellout work when given the chance.
      • Pete Repeat helps calm down Hollyhock from a panic attack. He then explains that after what a "shitty dude" did to him and his friend Maddy -- giving them bourbon-- made him a teetotaler, and he had to see a therapist. While some of the account is unreliable, given that Pete and Maddy were planning to bring vodka and Red Bull to prom, Pete points out that an adult leaving a teen to potentially die at the ER was irresponsible and traumatizing for both of them.
      • Gina has kept it quiet about BoJack choking her during a scene of Philbert because she knows that it would overshadow her career and she'd be traumatized over and over again if the media knew about it. As a result, however, she has developed bad PTSD. When a costar, male, grabs her neck while filming a tango and it wasn't planned, she has a Freak-Out, falls in an attempt to get away from him, and runs from set screaming that she wants her workplace to be safe. This causes the director to label her as a diva, saying that Gina is hard to work with when Kelsey gets the Fireflame director role.
    • A sobering one between Paige Sinclair and Maximilian Banks during "Sunk Cost and All That." Paige is engaged to a man named Baxter who remains offscreen; she talks to him over the phone constantly, planning to quit her job so as to marry him. Eventually, Max drums up the courage to confess to Paige that he loves her. This would normally result in Baxter becoming a Disposable Fiancé, and Paige marrying her journalist partner. Not here; for one, Max and Paige have a good working relationship, and she would rather keep it professional so she goes for Plausible Deniability by saying, "Everyone loves Paige Sinclair." And for another, she truly loves Baxter. No reasonable person is going to throw away a stable romantic relationship over a working business partnership.
    • "The View From Halfway Down" has BoJack convinced on realizing that he's in a Dying Dream in the second half that Diane will save him from drowning because he called her before getting in the pool. When he finally calls Diane as black tar seeps into the facsimile of his mother's house, dream Diane tiredly asks, "BoJack, why did you call me? I'm in Chicago. I can't save you." Chicago is nowhere near Los Angeles and the most Diane could have done if she picked up was talk BoJack down from his suicide attempt. "Nice While It Lasted" goes further; the real Diane reveals coldly to BoJack that he left a verbal Suicide Note on her voicemail while she was sleeping, and when she woke up she was convinced he was dead because it took a day for her to find out what was going on in Los Angeles. That he survived his attempt didn't stave off her nervous breakdown, and needing time to think if she wanted to move to Dallas with Guy and his kid Sonny. Diane tells off BoJack because he promised her he would be fine and sober if she went to Chicago, and that he pinned his survival on her.
  • Replacement Goldfish:
    • Deconstructed. Beatrice didn't abort BoJack, since her father burned a baby doll she had when she contracted scarlet fever, and the doll may have had germs. Turns out she liked the idea of a baby rather than the reality, of a screaming newborn constantly needing attention. BoJack resents his mother hating him for existing, and he mentions offhand in "The View from Halfway Down" that he could never measure up to Beatrice's older brother, Crackerjack, who died in World War II.
    • While Hollyhock is nothing like Sarah Lynn, in part because she has a support system of eight adoptive fathers who never pressured her into any career, BoJack sees a lot of Sarah Lynn in her. Namely, the fact that both are innocent in their worldview, emotionally depend on him, and hurt directly or indirectly because of his actions. The main difference is that BoJack puts in a lot of effort to keep his relationship with Hollyhock from foundering, changing his depressive addict ways for her. In a sad case of symbolism, after the second interview airs where Hollyhock (and the world) learns about Bojack's toxic dynamic with women and how he left Sarah Lynn to die, Hollyhock sends a letter to BoJack that drives him to drink again and changes her phone number.
  • Sunk Cost Fallacy: Mentioned by Princess Carolyn in "Sunk Cost and All That," a fittingly titled episode. She says that she's been helping put out BoJack's fires for years, and at this point she's in for the long haul. BoJack mentions with some guilt that maybe she needs to cut him out of her happy ending. He ends up being right; Princess Carolyn leaves him after the next episode.
  • This Is Reality:
    • "The Stopped Show" has Gina say this rather bitterly. She's mad at BoJack for overpowering her during a stunt and choking her, pointing out if there were justice, he'd be in jail for assault. While he is prepared to confess on live camera, she tells him she doesn't want that. Rather than anyone being concerned about how she feels, the media would label her as "the girl choked by BoJack Horseman" and not allow her to move on from the trauma, while stymying her career.
    • In "Good Damage," Charlotte tells Penny this when Penny considers telling Paige Sinclair and Max Banks about nearly sleeping with BoJack. She says that once a story is out in the world, you don't know how people will receive it. Sure, Penny might get closure for her Moment of Weakness, but it could go the other way and make her feel worse after strangers weigh on on decisions she made as a minor. Charlotte says that she won't stop Penny from going public with the story, but begs her to think about it for a few days first and then call the journalists if she feels sure.
  • This Is Unforgivable!: If BoJack messes up someone and breaks their trust in him, they'll toss the season's sole f-bomb at him. Seasons 4 and 6 were the exception; he planned to say "Fuck you, Mom!" to Beatrice and season 6 gave it to Gina's costar on a movie after she suffered a Freak-Out when he improvised a dip during a tango dance scene.
    • Herb Kazzaz tells BoJack, "Get the fuck out of my house!" to finish off his The Reason You Suck Speech about how he won't forgive BoJack for not providing emotional support when he needed it.
    • Charlotte finds BoJack in a compromising position with her daughter Penny. After her initial shock, she sends Penny to her room and orders BoJack to leave her house in thirty minutes or she will call the cops. She says in a voice of utter Tranquil Fury that if he ever contacts her or her family again, "I will fucking kill you."
    • Todd says disappointedly, "Fuck man, what else is there to say?" after learning that BoJack slept with his high school girlfriend Emily when Todd was planning to get back together with her, and BoJack thinks an apology will fix that.
    • Gina gasps out, "What the fuck is wrong with you?" after BoJack while high on painkillers chokes her for real during a stunt on Philbert. The next episode has her spell it out more harshly: BoJack may have not been himself but he still overpowered and nearly killed her, and she would speak up about it if it wouldn't hurt her acting career. He may be sorry, but sorry isn't good enough, and their relationship is over. She'll be civil when they're on-set, but that's it.
  • Unreliable Expositor: Diane claims in One Trick Pony that she first met BoJack at the party in the pilot. Five seasons later, we learn that they actually met at a Halloween party where BoJack was rude to her because he had just found out from his mother that his father died, and he had to drop everything to rearrange the funeral. Mr. Peanutbutter even lampshaded when Diane vented about how embarrassed he was that BoJack wouldn't remember it.
  • Wham! Episode:
    • "Zoes and Zeldas" is the first episode that reflects the dark themes of the show, where BoJack sabotages Todd's opera using character actress Margo Martindale and well-paid retail workers.
    • "Escape from L.A." has BoJack irreparably ruining his friendship with Charlotte after she catches him about to sleep with her daughter. He heads home, where Diane has not moved
  • Wham! Line:
    • "Best Thing That Ever Happened" ends with a Little No as one when despite Princess Carolyn saving his bacon one more time, BoJack refuses to keep her as an agent.
    • One from the end of "The New Client", courtesy of Vanessa Gecko: "I don't hate you." Princess Carolyn had built up this image as Vanessa Gecko being a catty Sitcom Arch Nemesis that existed to destroy her. Turns out Vanessa has always held Princess Carolyn in high respect, outright saying they're rivals, not bitter enemies. Princess Carolyn is mortified. A tiny one in the grand scheme of things, but poignant nonetheless.
    • "Xerox of a Xerox" has Biscuits Braxby drop a bomb on BoJack and the audience: he waited seventeen minutes to call an ambulance for Sarah Lynn, faking a phone call from her to create an alibi. Biscuits also reveals that Sarah Lynn didn't die in the planetarium; she died in the hospital. Meaning that BoJack could have saved her life but chose not to out of cowardice.
    • "The View From Halfway Down": courtesy of a Herb Kazzaz hallucination that BoJack converses with while trying to stay calm: "Oh BoJack, there is no other side. Don't you see? This is all there is"."
  • What the Hell, Hero?:
    • BoJack deserves his own category of this. If there is an episode where he doesn't receive this attitude, something is wrong, and most seasons end with him receiving a tongue-lashing.
    • Diane also gets her fair share of this for how her self-righteous attitude causes so many problems. "One Trick Pony" has BoJack call her out for the fact that she violated her ghostwriting contract to do a biography instead that portrays him in a negative light, with no "and all" to go with the warts part. Later in "Hank After Dark" as they go on tour, BoJack still hasn't forgiven Diane for her insensitivity and calls her out for how she wants him in her corner for the Hank scandal but she wasn't in his when he asked her to change the book. Mr. Peanutbutter also calls out Diane for not dropping the campaign to out Hank as a predator because he asked her not to and she lied to him, and she's been receiving death threats in the mail.
    • Most characters look over Princess Carolyn's sharky attitude. "Sunk Cost and All That" has Diane call out Princess Carolyn for wanting to sweep the latest BoJack scandal under the rug. She walks out in disappointment, saying that it's better for BoJack to come clean.
  • Wicked Stepmother: Contrary to what BoJack and Hollyhock initially believe when Hollyhock concludes that BoJack is her father, Beatrice is Hollyhock's stepmother by proxy, not her grandmother. "Time's Arrow" reveals that Butterscotch knocked up the housemaid Henrietta, and he begged Beatrice to talk to Henrietta. Beatrice made Henrietta give up the baby for adoption in exchange for paying for her nursing school tuition, so that Henrietta wouldn't be weighed down by Butterscotch's poor decisions the way that Beatrice was. While Beatrice attended the labor, she wouldn't let Henrietta hold the baby, revealed to be Hollyhock, under the belief that she would renege on the adoption plan. In the present, Beatrice in her addled senile state recognizes Hollyhock as "The Girl" and thinks she's helping her by spiking her coffee with diet pills. She gives a wicked chuckle when revealing Bojack this "secret" after he finds the giant box of diet pills in the coffee tin.