King of the Hill/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Acceptable Targets: Intellectuals, or rather, people who think they are intellectuals. Usually appearing without any advanced education, working experience in their field, or anything approaching common sense, the closest the series has to a usual "villain" type are people who believe themselves competent activists, authors, philosophers or educators, who show up to denigrate or swindle the Hills. Perhaps lampshaded, as all these "intelligent" and "progressive" people are unable to find employment or acceptances anywhere except Arlen, Texas, and even there everybody knows how ridiculous they are.
    • Jokes about fictional town Durndle and the people from it are pretty commonplace, as well.
    • A good example of a recurring Acceptable Target would be Anthony Page—the activist / social worker who has: attempted a fruitless investigation into Hank's parenting of Bobby in "Pilot", attempted to implement an ill-thought out Texan workers disability equality program at Strickland Propane that resulted in a druggie have free reign over the place in "Junkie Business", etc.
    • One episode had Hank get a thrown-out back. He attends Yoga sessions to relieve this, but he dislikes the self-absorbed, skirt chasing Yoga teacher (though softens slightly once he realizes the Yoga is helping). Immediately after he is fully healed, the guy in charge of disability finds out about this, automatically assumes he was taking advantage of worker's comp, and reports Hank to court. Hank's defense is that if he wasn't in agonizing pain, he would have punched the Yoga instructor out. This instantly convinces the judges.
    • People who actually do have advanced educations like the archeology professor and Bill's doctor are still often portrayed negatively, so the portrayal as self-important but unqualified may just be another aspect of the treatment of intellectuals, rather than unqualified intellectuals being the target itself.
      • It's worth noting that the doctors in Arlen all seem to be bitter, hostile burnouts who fully expect their patients to have done or are about to do incredibly stupid things and then lie about them...and the show often bears them out in this regard. It may be a subtle bit of Lampshade Hanging.
    • Mouth breathers: "Bobby is breathing through his mouth - I'm afraid if I feed him, he'll suffocate".
    • Anyone who owns any sort of animal that isn't a dog is considered a freak no matter how much they love their animal or how it's just one example being the deciding point for all types of animals.
  • Anvilicious: At least four episodes in the later seasons dealt with eating habits and dieting, mixed in with issues of self-respect and responsibility for one's actions.
    • The Fat and the Furious, where Bill discovers he has a knack for competitive eating, much to the revulsion of some of the neighborhood. Hank supports it because he wants to see an American win the Yellow Mustard Belt for hot dog eating, whereas Dale doesn't stop calling Bill a freak for his endeavors. It turns out Dale is actually trying to spare Bill the humiliation of being called a freak by the public, due to an experience he had as a kid. It turns out Dale is right, because on the day of the competition, Bill realizes his "adoring public" is actually laughing and jeering at him for being a freak.
    • Bill, Bulk, and the Body Buddies, where Bill has to get in shape for an army physical, but gets involved with a bunch of overenthusiastic body builders who handle his exercise regiment for him because he can't, or won't, do it by himself. Bill goes overboard and starts alienating his friends with his new musclebound ego, until he tries lifting too much weight and injures himself in a way that causes his rectum to rupture.
    • Trans-fascism, where Khan and Ted get foods made with trans fats banned from Arlen, all the while Hank is arguing that the government shouldn't ban certain types of food and people should take responsibility for their own eating habits. Bill believes that he's free to pig out on anything that's "government approved" because he figures it must be good for him, and slowly becomes more bloated and weaker than he's ever been. Dale even says, "I've never eaten raw oysters but now that they're contraband, I want them more!". Then gets sick. Meanwhile, Arlen gets gripped in a war between a lunch truck run by Buck Strickland (carrying all the contraband food items) and one run by a competitor named Rooster. Rooster uses his thugs to force people to eat at his truck, despite the unsanitary conditions causing everyone to get sick.
    • Dia-BILL-ic Shock, where Bill's eating habits finally get the best of him and he collapses twice due to the onset of adult diabetes. Bill can't manage his diet correctly, and then a Jerkass doctor informs him that he should get a wheelchair because he's probably going to lose his legs "sooner or later".
  • Awesome Music:
    • The theme song by the Refreshments. Seriously, listen to it.
    • "Life in a Northern Town" by the Dream Academy, which appears in the episode "Wings of a Dope." Fittingly, it was originally written as a tribute to a troubled British songwriter who committed suicide.
  • Base Breaker: Hank, at least for some tropers. On one hand, the man is a Fountain of Memes with a lot of funny mannerisms and great lines, and shows admirable traits such as a good work ethic and a desire to be a loving husband and father. Yet others aren't too keen on him mainly due to his status as an arguable Black Hole Sue who tends to never be in the wrong in later seasons, as well as his general attitude as a boring old stick in the mud who could stand to loosen up with Bobby.
    • Kahn and Minh. You have those who hate them for being a pair of obnoxious assholes... while others love them BECAUSE they're obnoxious assholes due to being hilariously terrible people.
  • Non Sequitur Scene: In the episode where Peggy, Minh, and Nancy are all running for head of the school board, Dale arrives at the trailer park to pick up voters for Nancy. The only guy there informs Dale that the voters were already picked up. He then tries to kill Dale for his hat.
  • Black Hole Sue: Hank Hill, the universe bends over time and time again to make him right. For example, Bobby becomes a Plus Sized model and is loving it, and Hank is embarrassed and thinks Bobby is going to be made fun of. Then, at the end of the episode after dragging Bobby away, several bullies began pelting the models with donuts, and Bobby said Hank was right.
    • Inverted with in the specific case with Hank's desire to make Bobby potential boyfriend material, in which Bobby does basically nothing Hank recommends in that regard, yet is regarded well romantically by many girls and had a longtime girlfriend who is considered attractive (according to Joseph and Chang Wasanasang), despite Bobby being overweight and of low-social status in school. On the other hand, Joseph is basically the embodiment of what Hank wants Bobby to be like in that regard (an athletic football star who sticks up for himself), yet he does very poorly in attracting girls, Lori seems to be his only real girlfriend the whole series.
    • Certain episodes will have Hank being told he's wrong and treated as the Butt Monkey, even though he's right. When Arlen is threatened by a flood, Hank somehow winds up at the Arlen dam, where the guy who is supposed to be watching the dam has abandonded his post. Hank has to use his best judgment and choose between opening a flood gate in case the cracks in the dam get bigger, thereby flooding South Arlen, or leaving it closed and the dam breaks. Hank opens the flood gate and South Arlen gets flooded. When Hank gets to the flood shelter, everyone finds out that he's "the Arlen Flooder" and chew him out, including the guy who was supposed to be at the dam watching the controls. Hank points this out, but everyone else tells him not to pin it on someone else. This doesn't get better by the episode's end.
  • Complaining About Shows You Don't Watch: Many who haven't watched the show seem to figure that's nothing but white trash humor and something similar to Squidbillies. It's not.
  • Continuity Porn: The series finale was initially going to be Luanne's wedding. Which explains why the episode's closing scene featured characters from throughout the series who only appeared in one or two episodes attending the wedding.
  • Designated Hero: Hank in "Get Your Freak Off". He was so laughably old timey it wasn't funny. Granted it turned out he was right in a sense, he still kinda acted overprotective.
    • Realistically, Hank period. He just as often makes the problem worse as he does pull people out of the mess.
  • Designated Villain: If anyone disagrees with or lightly annoys Hank, they are always this.
  • Eagle Land: Attempting to be Mixed Flavor leaning towards Type 1, but doesn't always get the mix right.
  • Evil Is Sexy: Debbie Grund, Buck Strickland's crazed mistress who is prone to acting very touchy-feeling and stripping down to her underpants.
  • Family-Unfriendly Aesop: A lot of them appear through the series, "Husky Bobby" stands out in particular.
  • Fridge Horror: In the episode when Bill gets involved with a bunch of over-enthusiastic body builders in order to get in shape for his army physical, he injures himself after putting on too many weights for a work-out machine. We don't know exactly what injury the machine caused until the end of the episode. The doctor states that Bill had ruptured his rectum, causing his internal systems to become external. Think about that for a minute.
  • Funny Aneurysm Moment: The tragic premature death of Brittany Murphy has turned many of Luanne's moments into this, especially the two-parter where the Megalo-Mart blows up and Luanne is feared to be dead ( she survived, but lost her hair), the final season episodes where Luanne has a child (before her death, Brittany Murphy stated that she wanted to have children in 2010) and the episode where Luanne is visited by the angel of her dead boyfriend, Buckley (not just because of Brittany Murphy's death, but because of the death of her husband five months later).
  • Funny Moments: Now has its own page.
  • Genius Bonus: In one episode where everyone at Strickland Propane is trying to get in on the Americans with Disabilities Act, one employee claims he has a priapism and requires a roomier workstation and a view of Debbie. "Priapism" is a medical term for an erection.[1]
  • Harsher in Hindsight: Bill's comment form "Peggy's Turtle Song" about how the cute Strange Girl looks "Pro-Choice" in a worried tone. Flash forward to the late 2000s when the republican party is mandating invasive screenings for abortions and generally cutting back on women's health and services.
  • Heartwarming Moments: Now has—you guessed it--its own page.
  • Hilariously Abusive Childhood: Depending on your feelings about Hank and Peggy's behavior, Bobby's entire life qualifies as this.
    • Played more straight with Hank's upbringing under Cotton.
  • Idiot Ball: Boomhaur picks up one a few times.
  • Idiot Plot: A lot of the episodes aren't possible without Bobby acting like a dumbass. Sometimes he's downright unlikable because of this.
    • This also happens on fairly regular occasion with Hank whose naivety or old fashioned nature will lead him into trouble when he should really know better.
      • One episode in particular involves Peggy Hill accidentally kidnapping a Mexican girl. When she brings her back and everyone acts happy (because the girl had been returned) Peggy assumes that they're praising her. Yes, Peggy does have an incredibly huge ego but even a child knows that correcting a horrible mistake doesn't result in praise.
    • In fact, the entire show seems to run off of the main cast being entirely composed of stubborn dumbasses, to the point that one of the more common plot threads is "Character A is accused of doing something terrible or is caught in a compromising situation, everyone automatically assumes the worst no matter what Character A says or does to the contrary". Dale has stated on at least one occasion that he, Bill and Boomhauer would have gotten themselves killed long ago if not for Hank, and even he's not immune to this sort of thing - in one episode Bobby develops an allergy to dog dander and it leads to him living in the dog house Hank initially built for Ladybird, at Hank's behest.
  • Jerkass Woobie: Peggy can be unbearable at times (especially in later seasons), then there are episodes such as "Strangeness on a Train..."
    • Dale is a an annoying pest, but a faithful husband who was cheated on for all those years.
  • Knight of Cerebus: Chip Larson for his insanity making him believe Luanne was the Larson Pork Girl and him thinking he was the prized pig on the labels from implied psychological abuse form his mother. Also the Omega House from "Fun with Jane and Jane" for basically the above and pulling a Karma Houdini.
  • Memetic Mutation: Hank Hill sells propane and propane accessories.
    • Wait a minute, I have a wife!
    • For a while, there was a YouTube Poop fad in which the music from the scene in which Hank listens to Bobby's walkman is replaced with whatever the filmmaker believes to be Acceptable Targets.
    • And, in some circles, there's the catchphrase conglomerate "There's propane in my urethra."
      • Which actually comes from an off-screen parody of KotH from an episode of The Simpsons.
  • Moral Event Horizon: Peggy sabotaging Lucky's chance at earning his GED.
    • For a lot of fans, Buck Strickland really went over the line when he messed with the site of his mistress' accidental death and went the extra mile to make Hank look guilty of murdering her.
  • Moment of Awesome: Now has its own page.
  • Nightmare Fuel:
    • One episode has a scene in which a character is brutally killed by a giant sausage grinder (offscreen, of course). This is played for laughs, though it's lampshaded a couple of times by Peggy.
    • Even worse in that the character in question is voiced by Michael Keaton, aka THE GODDAMN Batman!!!!!
    • "Pigmalion", the Larson Pork Products episode. Young woman forced to live out a creepy older man's fantasy. Creepy older man gets turned into a pork product.
    • An earlier example occurs in "Hilloween" where Bobby briefly fears his father working with the devil due to the Strawman evangelical antagonist of the episode. Cue the demonic rendition of a flashback where Hank transforms into a laughing Satan staring into the viewer's soul.
    • "The Texas Skillsaw Massacre": Dale puts his finger in front of a moving blade and it is severed. You can see Dale's severed finger on the table with blood gushing out.
    • Anyone who has ever been bitten by a fire ant knows how painful it is; Dale is attacked by a swarm of them in "King of the Ant Hill", luring them onto him in order to save Bobby from the same fate. Seeing as Dale is a professional exterminator and knows how dangerous they are, this is very much a Crowning Moment of Awesome for Dale, despite how terrifying it is.
  • Out of Focus: Connie post-breakup with Bobby.
  • Tear Jerker: Pretty much the entire "Wings of a Dope" episode, in which Buckley's angel comes back, particularly the scene in which he and Luanne bounce on the trampoline after first meeting. Fireflies appear around them and fittingly enough, Dream Academy's "Life in a Northern Town" plays in the background.
  • Took a Level in Jerkass: Everyone in the cast.
  • The Scrappy: A lot of people seem to really dislike Peggy, especially in the later seasons after her personality changed, when she became an overbearing, obnoxious, and just plain smug know-it-all.
    • Not many people like Lucky either thanks to not only being a textbook example of a stupid white trash redneck, but for pulling Luanne into the lifestyle that she tried oh so hard to avoid in earlier seasons.
  • Seasonal Rot: Season 7 marked the point where the balance of comedy and character was upset, with comedy overtaking character which led to Flanderization, a halt in character development and more formulaic storytelling. However, while the focus was changed the show was still very funny which is how despite this it remained consistently entertaining. So whether this is averted or played straight is entirely YMMV.
  • Squick: During the episode when Peggy is the substitute sex ed teacher, she's discussing with her friends their respective experiences in learning about the birds and the bees. Basically, they're all very repressed, and think that what was good for them is good enough for their kids. Since they themselves grew up not knowing the proper names for "your ding dong and your woohoo". One mentions a book her mom gave her, The Loveliness of Women, which was nothing but pictures of flowers. Peggy discredits the book as "worthless". One of Peggy's friends mentions that she got something out of it: whenever her husband crawls over her at night and "does his business", she just lies back and thinks about those flowers.
  • Straw Man Has a Point: Happens a lot throughout the series.
  • "Stop Having Fun!" Guys: Hank shows traces of this, only being in it to win at the expense of having fun.
    • In the final episode, the meat inspection team is pretty much this to the tee.

Peggy: Oh Bonnie. You poor, poor woman.

  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: In the season six two-parter episode 'Returning Japanese', we find out that Hank has a Japanese half-brother who he meets for the first time. Junichiro, the brother in question is only in this episode and makes a brief cameo during Luanne's wedding, which is unfortunate seeing how his status as Hank's brother and a rather amusing character in his own right could have led to interesting interactions with Hank's family and friends that never came to pass.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: In "The Perils of Polling" Luanne joins the communist party during the election of 2000. They just say of communist party "Boss people around" and don't get into it besides it. The episode could have been Luanne voting for a democrat and Hank having to learn how to tolerate someone who doesn't believe in his political views.
  • Unfortunate Implications: In the episode where Connie joins the wrestling team, they have to "find a way out of hurting her" when she faces Bobby instead of actually competing.
    • The problem lies more in Bobby not beating up a girl or getting beat by a girl.
    • "Uh-Oh Canada" has the conservative christian leads (plus Kahn) espouse beliefs that America is all around better than Canada (Represented here by strawmen that could be just anyone from any episode with no difference). Essentially its all the stereotypes of conservative texans towards foreigners.
      • That being said, both Hank AND the Canadians were shown to be obnoxious, overbearing patriots who ended up being Not So Different, so this may have been intentional.
  • Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist: By the second season, everybody takes turns being this. It's hard to feel bad for Hank when his problems are often caused by his own naivete or even flat-out ignorance, or Peggy when her problems are caused by her ego, or the rest of the cast, who apparently juggle Idiot Balls whenever they're offscreen.
  • Values Dissonance: The series has a mostly conservative christian main cast, the things they do or say that come off as strongly this or Unfortunate Implications. A good example is Hank's reliance on "traditional values" when it comes to sports and how he views Peggy not really earning money like he does at work.
  • We're Still Relevant, Dammit!: The Myspace-centric episode. In 2008.
  • What the Hell, Hero?: Hank, repeatedly. Probably the worst is running away in fear when John Redcorn has a complete and total emotional meltdown over his lack of connection to his son, closely followed by his actions causing Bill to have a psychotic breakdown.
    • And when he pulls Bill out of a support group that's actually doing him good.
  • The Woobie: Bill is fat, pathetic, and probably smells, which is exactly why you can't help but feel great pity for him.
  1. ↑ Specifically, one that doesn't go away as normal
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